"Summary". Exhibition of works by Olga Bulgakova

The Russian Academy of Arts presents an exhibition of works by Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts Olga Vasilievna Bulgakova "Summary". The exhibition features paintings from the 1980s to 2010s, as well as a number of pencil and watercolor sketches made by the author since the 1970s. As if "retelling" life, his creative search and the principles of working on a painting, the artist puts out short but capacious accents where large-scale retrospective exhibitions, in view of the chosen general line, usually lose the acuteness of historical events and the fragility on which the modernity of art is based.

Olga Bulgakova belongs to the generation of artists who began their career in the seventies. The early works of the master are filled with allegorical, metaphorical images. This is a search for a code of visual language - allegories, transformations and allusions - in the desire to say more than is noticeable at first glance. In his complexly arranged works, the author attaches great importance to glazes and details, executed with artistic filigree. Rich in artistic images, Bulgakova’s works are like a freeze-frame in the process of constant transformation of the Universe. Combining elements of symbolism and surrealism, the artist builds his paintings on the tension of the coexistence of extremes and remains open to a variety of interpretations. Mysterious women, birds, phantasmagoric dwarfs are frequent characters in her paintings of the late 1980s and 1990s.

The artist does not insist on a certain reading of his paintings, inviting viewers to dialogue with the work itself, allowing them to read the work themselves. Internal experiences and rethinking of positions led to dramatic changes in the canvases of the late 1990s. Figurative elements are minimized to complete disappearance - liberation from the subject in an abstract series. Over time, the master’s pointless experiences are transformed, and in the cycle "Archaisms" geometric figures appear - a circle, a rectangle. Later, the circle transforms into a powerful plastic sign of the Name. The name as a symbol-archetype appears already in a new quality - the paintings of this series are made on color contrasts with expressive powerful strokes; they embody both the concrete and the infinite.

In the cycle "Names" included in the exhibition, the artist depicts only faces, or faces, and maybe - masks. Dark and lighter, transparent and massive, sometimes seemingly hopelessly tragic, sometimes, perhaps, enlightened, and more often - on the way from pole to pole. The exhibition also presents sketches dedicated to the works of Gogol, Pushkin, as well as drawings related to the theme of the theater and the fate of the artist. Drawings from the "Biblical Cycle" occupy a special place in the graphic part of the exhibition.

"Summary" is a retrospection of Olga Bulgakova’s works in the exhibition halls of the Russian Academy of Arts, which will become a landmark cultural event for all admirers of the author’s talent and will clearly demonstrate the most important stages in the work of this remarkable Moscow artist.

The material was prepared on the basis of articles by Natalia Kolodzei and Alexander Yakimovich.