Joseph Natanovich Zisman. Human space

Gallery "Flow", 3rd floor, 0 +.

“I was always sorry to waste time on something other than painting…”
IN. Zisman

The name of Joseph Zisman is a kind of Petersburg brand, known to everyone who is interested in Russian painting in one way or another. His works are kept in almost all museums of St. Petersburg, from the Russian to the Tsarskoye Selo collection, and the upcoming personal exhibition at Artmuz will feature key paintings from the most mature period in the life of the legendary artist, according to most Russian art critics.

Joseph Natanovich lost his parents in the Civil War, grew up in an orphanage, went through the Great Patriotic War, suffered hardships, but remained inseparable from painting. For a long time, his painterly talent did not find support in the eyes of conservative colleagues from the Leningrad Union of Artists, against whom Zisman looked too avant-garde, but fame and official recognition overtook the artist at the age of 70.

The artist Anatoly Zaslavsky, a close friend of Joseph Natanovich and an extremely significant figure in pictorial circles, wrote that “As a result of a deep long-term comprehension of the laws of constructing a pictorial picture, a strong ethical and intellectual core was formed in Joseph, around which all the real space surrounding him was built…”.

The exhibition will feature works from the “mature” period of Iosif Zisman’s creativity, when figurative painting was replaced by symbolism, and the works began to “lose their outline and become inconceivably thinner in color. Color almost completely abandons tonal differences, and the world, our real world, gradually dematerializes, transforming into a color glow, as if wishing to disappear ”(in the words of Zaslavsky).

It is worth noting that Natalya Iosifovna Zisman, the artist’s daughter and heiress of a special artistic flair, annually gathers representatives of the St. Petersburg art establishment to honor the memory of her father on his birthday. This year the event will be held as part of the personal exhibition of Joseph Natanovich and will be timed to coincide with her opening day on May 15.