PAST SHOWS

Elder Gallery
presents

Painters of Russia & the Soviet Union
1950 – 2005

Opening Reception:
Friday, August 5, 2005
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m

The twentieth century paintings of Russia and the Soviet Union present a dramatic view of the daily activities of the Russian people. Elder Gallery’s exhibition features oil paintings by twenty-four critically acclaimed artists whose work includes seascapes, landscapes, sensitive portraits of children and adults, genre paintings and still life subjects.

Approximately forty paintings in a variety of styles will be included in Elder Gallery’s second annual exhibition of paintings from Russia and the Soviet Union. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a painting by Grigori Vasetski which was completed in 1952. Vasetski was born in 1928 near Poltava, Ukraine. He attended secondary art school in Kiev until 1948 when he was accepted into the prestigious Kiev Art Institute, where he studied from 1949 until 1955. After his acceptance into the Kiev Artists’ Union, he became a well-known painter of socialist realism in the Soviet Ukraine.

The exhibition will include a painting by Oleg Lomakin, who was one of the most recognized Soviet artists from Leningrad. His work was included in the recent Tretyakov-Smithsonian Exhibition, held in Washington, DC.

Aleksei Borodin was born in 1915 and was considered by many to be a natural-born artist nurtured by circumstance and defined by hardship. Late in his life he stated: “The pursuit of the secret of painting drove me on from one canvas to the next. I always dreamed of capturing at least a tiny part of that secret, to come into contact with the miracle of art. Art is born in suffering. There is no easy path. I worked and studied throughout my whole life. I never knew peace. No matter the circumstances, I always strove to learn the secret of the human form and all living forms.”

Yana Golubyatnikova is an exciting young artist who paints a classic genre with high energy and creative nerve. Her paintings offer a challenge to the viewer since she paints familiar subject matter with a style which includes elements of abstraction as well as impressionism. She takes her Ukrainian art heritage of broad brushwork and daring color to a new level.

Another contemporary artist, Alexander Kremer, is a third generation classical painter from St. Petersburg. His paintings, like many of the artists before him, capture the beauty of the Russian landscape in a traditional style.

All of the paintings in Elder Gallery’s exhibition reflect a strong artistic history of Russia and the Soviet Union. The artists have captured scenes from a life that was closed to the outside world for so many years. Regardless of genre, the paintings are stylistically strong, moving and influenced by a century of tremendous events.

Exhibition runs through September 24, 2005.

Here are several paintings that are included in the exhibition.