Igor Dryomin:
"The volume of the image." Exhibition of works by Igor Pchelnikov

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

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.

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”.

Information: http://www.rah.ru/exhibitions/detail.php?ID=31748