Exhibition of Mikhail Alexandrovich Shatalov

From June 10 to July 9, an exhibition dedicated to the memory of the artist Mikhail Alexandrovich Shatalov will be held in the Attic of Artists. Attic Artists collaborated with Mikhail Alexandrovich for more than 10 years. Mikhail Alexandrovich was one of the first artists with whom the Mansard of Artists began to collaborate. At the moment, more than a hundred of his works are presented in our walls - the exhibition includes only a part of them.

Many of the works of Mikhail Shatalov broadcast his explosive temperament, talking about sorrow, horror, gloomy thoughts. But the artist’s high emotionality cannot be one-sided and among his paintings there are many bright, tender and festive.

In 2018, we presented an exhibition of Shatalov’s paintings and sculptures and now we want to look at his career from a different angle.

Mikhail Shatalov was born on November 12, 1931 in Grozny, and after two his family moved to Leningrad. In his youth, he was a student at the Law Faculty of Leningrad State University, but he preferred a sculptor’s career as a lawyer and entered the sculpture department of the Serov School. Like many of his colleagues, the sculptor Shatalov lived a double life - at work he created monumental propaganda, and in his spare time - asymmetric, anti-naturalistic sculptures, being carried away not by subjects, but by the study of the dynamics of plastic masses. The works of the early period of the artist practically did not survive - many works were donated, others were lost in moving.

In the 1970s, Shatalov took up drawing, a decade later became interested in oil painting, leaving the sculpture because of its domestic and financial exactingness - this type of art is difficult to do without a permanent workshop. Belonging to the environment of Leningrad non-conformism, Shatalov somewhat fell out of his nature-oriented tradition, remaining, in the words of a friend of the artist Valery Valran, a “lone wanderer”. In his graphics and paintings, Shatalov was guided by the principles of spontaneous expressionism, working with archetypes and sensations.

In love with the vital painting of Picasso and Matisse, Shatalov painted many beautiful and full of life portraits, landscapes and still lifes. An important place in his work is occupied by the motif of Pavlovsky Park. In parallel with his studies at the Serov School, the artist worked in the Pavlovsk Palace, often walked in the park, and it was there that he met his future wife, who led tours of the museum. Years later, Mikhail Shatalov continued to return to the park, take a walk, resting his soul, and at home recreate a sense of joyful peace in numerous landscapes.

In the gallery you can also buy a catalog that contains the works of Mikhail Shatalov for half a century of his career - from 1970 to 2018.