Exhibition of works by Igor Pchelnikov "Image Volume"

July 12, 2016 at 16.00 in the halls of the Russian Academy of Arts (Prechistenka St., 21) an exhibition of the works of the national artist of the Russian Federation, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts Igor Pchelnikov "Image volume" opens.

Black Snow. 2010

Uch-Dere. oil on canvas 2011

I.V. Pchelnikov (born 1931) belongs to the galaxy of the largest masters of domestic monumental art. In 1956 he graduated from the V.I. Mukhina Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial College. As part of a creative group of young artists, he participated in the decoration of the Palace of Pioneers on the Lenin Hills. In the 1970s he created such vivid and significant works as colored reliefs at the USSR Embassy in Paris and in the interiors of the Southern Foros sanatorium in Crimea, a three-dimensional composition in the restaurant of the Moscow Hotel (co-authored with I. Lavrova), etc. With their inventive imagination and elements of the game, artists transformed the interiors of public buildings. Among the famous monumental works of I. Pchelnikov is a stained-glass window in the foyer of the Modern Theater, a spatial composition of metal on the facade of the Meyerhold Center. In 2007, in collaboration with M. Krasilnikova, he executed a fountain in the square near the Riga Station in Moscow.

In easel creativity, presented on display, the artist amazes with the depth and strength of the created images, sincerity, and a heightened sense of color and space.

Abilin visiting Pchelnikova. 2004. The boom. pace

Dirty snow, dirty road. 2012

Since the late 1980s, Pchelnikov turns to the gospel theme. His canvases, full of drama, sincere empathy, convey the intensity of the passions of the modern world. The artist interprets them in a philosophical context, sees in them the opportunity to more deeply and acutely raise the themes of human existence.

In his easel work, Pchelnikov continues to be a monumentalist. For him, the design of the work is important, the relief of the picturesque form, the clash of contrasting color masses, the desire for three-dimensionality of the work itself as an object.

The art of I. Pchelnikov requires reciprocal work from the viewer, makes you think, analyze. The artist dramatically experiences significant, or only noticeable, events that “give impetus to plastic reasoning,” in which he goes beyond purely personal relationships with reality, rising to metaphysical levels. As the art critic T. Nechaeva writes, “compromises are unacceptable for him, all artificiality is intolerable, like a lie, he runs away from it to simplicity, natural coarsening, roughness, fragility, which can be injured, to take a soul”.

The motives of I. Pchelnikov’s “everyday” painting are simple - a garden, a village, a gate, a dog near a booth, roofs of houses (“Twilight”, “Night terrace”, “Old trees”, “Garden in winter”, “Shadows in the snow”). Nothing seems to happen in them, but they evoke a sense of eventful significance. He writes the essential features of objects and states, minimizing and concentrating the means of expression - “earth, space, a person walking his own path in it”. The tense nerve of picturesque-plastic and spatial interactions, the conflict of opposite principles offends the viewer for the living.

Terrace at night. 2012

Terrace at night. The flip side. 2012

In the artist’s work, a capacious image of the road constantly arises, which carries many meanings. Pchelnikov’s “roads” provide an image of living land, a homeland, an image of space in which a person feels his scale.

The retrospective exhibition includes paintings and drawings created in the 1970s - 2016.

The exhibition is open until July 31, 2016.