"Pavel Nikonov. Painting of observations"

Today, the name of Pavel Nikonov, or rather the popularity of the name, in a broad sense, continues to be associated with the long-past events of the country’s cultural life in the late 1950s and 1960s. "Thaw", "severe style", the exhibition "30 years of Moscow Union of Artists" and others are extremely important in themselves, and, of course, turning points hang in the air of inertia of judgments. The figure of Pavel Nikonov from an acting artist turns into a witness and participant of the era.

In recent years, there has been a desire to move away from the vector of thought, where the artist’s painting is inextricably linked with the "harsh style" and the acquired symbolic status of some of his early paintings. Art criticism and the professional community immediately noted Nikonov, who revised his own approach to painting and developed the theme of village life since the early 1970s. For a wider audience, unfortunately, this period, which already has half a century of constant search and work, remains invisible.

A number of personal exhibitions of the artist in recent years, the exhibition "Then and Now" (2013) in the gallery "Kovcheg" and "New Nikonov" (2018-2019) - a project at the Pushkin Museum im. AS Pushkin emphasize the difference between the periods of the artist’s creative biography and reveal at the same time the worldview integrity of Nikonov and the potential for the internal development of his painting.

The exhibition "Painting of Observations" continues this clarifying line, but differs from the past exhibition projects in a number of fundamental concepts and ways of describing Pavel Nikonov’s painting. Curators are trying to move away from the context of a clear periodization of the development of the artist’s work, to turn to its essential basis. In their opinion, "Nikonov’s paintings are a" soul "at work!" Not in a religious or mystical sense, but in the social involvement of oneself in work, hidden and autonomous in relation to economic factors and standards of the art market. Today, when it comes to gaining a soul and one’s own name through professional artistic practice, it should be noted that network and corporate organizations of communication in the environment and digital technologies are becoming tools for the enslavement of human souls.

Since 1972, the village of Aleksino has been a refuge for Pavel Nikonov and a place where a change of landmarks is possible. The information noise of the city is replaced by the systematic collection of material, a kind of experiment, where a visible and isolated image becomes the subject of observation and study. The tangible world is no longer an expressive reality, but a living, resonant fabric for the future canvas. Therefore, the basis of Nikonov’s work has nothing to do with the representative, realistic tradition, but in its aesthetic tasks it is close to the "laborious", expressive work of the soul in the spirit of, for example, Van Gogh and Filonov, where the intention in the body is open in the direction of every Other, where the meeting with the Other is clothed with suffering and pleasure, and the opportunity to become this Other is reflection, consciousness and sensitivity.

The exhibition provides the viewer with the opportunity to once again relive, comprehend the work of one of the leading masters of Russian painting, plunging into the problems of professional searches for art of the XX-early XXI centuries, looking from a new angle at the role, features of the existence of art, of the artist in the modern world.

P.F. Nikonov was born on May 30, 1930 in Moscow. He survived the war with his family in evacuation in the Urals. In 1956 he graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute. IN AND. Surikov. Participant of cultural events of the "thaw", the famous exhibition "30 years of the Moscow Union of Artists" in 1962-1963 in the Manege, where his painting "Geologists" became one of the main targets of criticism.

The era of the 1960s, the time of intense pictorial and plastic searches in art, became for P. Nikonov a powerful impetus to the development of his own visual language. He was a member of the "Nine" group. By the end of the 1970s, the village theme became one of the main themes in the artist’s works. In 1998-2006 he headed the easel painting workshop at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute. IN AND. Surikov.

PF Nikonov was awarded high state and professional awards. He is a Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, holder of the Order of Honor. Awarded the Gold Medal at the All-Union Art Exhibition 1957-1958. for the painting "October" (1954), First Prize at the V International Exhibition of Realistic Painting in Sofia (People’s Republic of Bulgaria, 1985) for the painting "Village Funeral" (1985), for the same painting - the Prize for Painting named after A. P. P. Konchalovsky (1991), the Gold Medal of the USSR Academy of Arts for the works presented at the personal exhibition in 1990 in Moscow (1991), the Order "For Service to Art" of the Russian Academy of Arts (2015).

The master’s works are presented in the State Tretyakov Gallery, State Russian Museum, Vologda Art Gallery, Sofia Museum of Contemporary Painting, other museums in Russia, as well as abroad.

The material is based on an article by art critic Alexander Salenkov.

The exhibition is open to the public from 1 to 27 September 2020.