"Glass" by Alexander Fokin

The Russian Academy of Arts presents an exhibition of works by the Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts Alexander Ivanovich Fokin “Glass”. The exhibition will showcase several dozen works created using the frosted engraved glass technique, which is considered perhaps the most sophisticated and refined in the history of world glassmaking.

Alexander Fokin creates his works, reviving in Russian art interest in this classical type of glass processing, the heyday of which in Europe and Russia occurred in the 17th – 18th centuries. Engraving is one of the methods of cold glass processing; grinding a shallow negative matte image onto the surface of a product using a rotating copper or abrasive wheel. While working, the author does not have the opportunity to eliminate inaccuracies - the slightest wrong movement, and it is impossible to correct the drawing, as on paper. It requires refinement, steadiness of the hand and a jeweler’s sense of relief form and perfectly corresponds to the peculiarities of the creative individuality of the master, giving wide artistic possibilities and giving the works unexpected effects. Impeccable mastery of the instrument allows the artist to achieve gradation of light and shadow, contrasts of transparent and matte, line and spot, and create unique original works.

A. Fokin’s favorite genre is portraiture, which is considered one of the most complex in this art form. The skill of a draftsman, mastery of the means of plastic modeling, the ability to notice and capture characteristic features allowed him to create accurate psychologically expressive images. The internal characteristics of his works are reliable, although he does not scrupulously convey all the features of the external appearance, but dwells on the main thing in his perception of the model, subordinating the drawing and plastic relief to this. He follows the inner feeling of nature and copes with equal success both with a generalized solution of images of representatives of past eras - V. Belinsky, M. Lermontov, A. Radishchev, and with deeply realistic images of his contemporaries - portraits of colleagues, his loved ones - his wife, children, friends and just acquaintances. In them, the artist often uses a round shape of the layer, “enveloping” the image and giving it completeness, while the transparency and internal glow of the glass create a special lyricism.

On irregularly shaped blocks, Fokine depicts plot compositions, sometimes complementing them with color accents, as, for example, in the work “Dreams” (2021). Optical glass with its absolute transparency creates a light-air spatial environment that the author values. As a rule, he leaves the background clean, only occasionally depicting additional details with light shading. His landscapes are simple, his favorite motif being trees weaving bare branches into a graceful pattern. What is important here is not the complexity, but the internal symbolic fullness; these are landscapes-reflections, in which the laconicism of the means only emphasizes a single idea.

In his works, modernity is combined with eternal themes, restraint with complexity of content, professionalism with a wonderful sense of the beauty of the material. His art forces one to carefully examine and reflect, and finds a vivid emotional response in the soul of the viewer. The perfection of stylistic composition and plastic solutions, the excellent execution of his works place Alexander Fokin, without a doubt, among the leading glass artists of our time.

Information Department (press service) of the Russian Academy of Arts based on articles by L. V. Kazakova and V. S. Golova.

Alexander Fokin was born in 1958 in the Penza region. In 1981 he graduated from the painting and pedagogical department of the Penza Art School named after. K. A. Savitsky, and then in 1987 received a fundamental education at the State Academy of Arts and Industry named after. Stieglitz (formerly V. I. Mukhina Leningrad Higher Art School), where he studied with the best masters. Interest in engraved glass arose and strengthened as a result of the artist’s meeting with recognized engravers F. S. Kovalev and A. M. Burmatkin at a glass factory in Nikolsk. It was there that the author completed his internship and learned this craft, and then from 1987 he worked as the main artist for ten years. In 1991 he was admitted to the Union of Artists, in 2004 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Russian Academy of Arts, in 2005 he became a diploma winner at the IV International Symposium on Engraved Glass in the city of Kamenetsky Shenov (Czech Republic). Fokin’s personal exhibitions were held in Penza, Tolyatti, Samara, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk; he participated in international glass symposiums, regional, zonal, and all-Russian exhibitions. The works of Alexander Fokin are in the Elaginoostrovsky Palace-Museum of St. Petersburg, the Life of Glass gallery in Moscow, the Art Gallery in Samara, the Penza Art Gallery, the Museum of Glass and Crystal in Nikolsk; in museums of Kaliningrad and Tolyatti; in private collections in Russia, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, America and Luxembourg.