Igor Dryomin:
"Victor Zhidyaev. Art born on Lake Baikal"

Victor Ivanovich Zhidyaev (1938-2015) - graphic artist, painter, teacher worked in the style of fantastic realism. He brought up more than one generation of gifted young artists of Buryatia, Pribaikalye. His experimental creative studio “Ekorshe” held exhibitions during the years of “perestroika”, which largely repeated the fate of the “bulldozer” exhibitions of the Moscow “thaw”.

Inspired by nature, myths and legends of Lake Baikal, the artist creates his own world of fantasy and beauty. The amazing power of his work lies in the combination of realism and a special manner of a planar, decorative solution to the composition. He himself, gifted with natural kindness and deep self-consciousness, believed in man, in his creative beginning. In love with drawing and knowing his secrets, he was able to convey this love to his students.

The exhibition hosted the presentation of Svetlana Angarskaya’s novel Enlightened. At the All-Russian contest “Image of a Book” in 2014, drawings made by Viktor Zhidyaev for this novel won a prize in the nomination “Best Illustrations to Works of Fiction”.