Boris Sveshnikov: (1927-1998).
ALLEGORICAL IN CONTENT, these delicately penned drawings by Boris
Sveshnikov represent the fabric of an artist's life under the
Soviet regime. At the age of 19, a student of the Moscow Institute of
Decorative and Applied Arts, he was accused and arrested for his
participation in protests against the subversive politics of the
Communist government. He was sentenced to 8 years in the Stalinist labor
camp, Ukhta. The brutal daily labor practices, physically and mentally
erased the memory of outside life. Boris found himself covering scraps
of brown paper with his drawings. But it was the assistance of an
influential fellow prisoner, which enabled a transfer to a night
watchman's job. This created Sveshnikov the opportunity for his
clandestine night drawings. The subjects of his ink works had the nature
of amazing scenes of fantastic visions. Fairy tale characters,
phantasmagorical scenes, reminiscent of Breughl and Bosch changed the
paper and the artist with experiences beyond the Gulag. Permitted only
one visit per year by his mother, his drawings were tightly rolled into
thin tubes and secretively transported to Moscow. After the death of
Stalin in 1953, and his public denunciation by Krushchev, amnesty was
given to many political prisoners including Boris Sveshnikov.
One with an intuitive eye will see the same visionary processes in
his work from the 1940's camp drawings as with the last works in
the late 1990's. The character and stroke of his line remain but
with a different descriptive narrative. The complexity of surviving an
irrational chapter left the artist illustrating an equally intangible
world; one of experiential space. Sveshnikov approached his art with
biological impact. Figures, not of light fancy, but engaged in a
spiritual world now emphatically expressive. These people, usually
inseparable from the landscape, face a powerful neo-realism in their
lives. The drawings of the later years are the literal liberation of the
artist.
The vocabulary of Boris Sveshnikov is preserved in his drawings....
The first solo exhibition of a renowned Russian artist Boris
Sveshnikov (1927-1998), a man with a unique talent and a tragic life,
opened yesterday (March 16, 2005) at Mimi Ferzt Gallery.
In his monumental book "Contemporary Russian Art"
Alexander Glezer writes about Sveshnikov, "In 1946, still a
freshman at the Moscow State Academy of Decorative and Applied Art, he
was falsely accused of anti-soviet activities and thrown into a labor
camp. However, back then while the free artists were being inundated
with social realism, Sveshnikov, miraculously survived the intensity of
labor and became a night guard at a saw mill with an art studio adjacent
to it, found himself absolutely liberated."....
This is what Andrey Sinyavsky wrote about the artist in his essay
... which was published in a French edition of "Appollo--77":
"Sveshnikov's drawings contain transformable meaning. The one
who doesn't know they are about labor camps and that they have been
painted in a labor camp will never know ... They aren't direct
images of reality, but dreams of infinity sliding down the glass of
nature and history ... Perhaps it was his awareness of the value of time
that led Sveshnikov to bring together the past and the present, the hard
labor and the innovativeness of Kahlo, Watteu, Breugel, Durer, and Goya
... Written over the music score of history, the allusions of world art,
his paintings stretch, and his graphic arts, due to the power given to
them by nature, smooth everything out into a white field with dark
strokes...."
Many of his graphic and fine art, shown in this exhibition, were
created in the 90s.
Mimi Ferzt Gallery, New York, NY March 2005
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Untitled, 1988, ink on paper
11 1/4 x 15"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Lantern, 1650, pen, ink on paper
11 3/8 x 15 1/4"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Untitled, 1985, ink on paper
12 1/2 x 12 5/8"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Weakness, 1996, ink on paper
12 x 16 7/8"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Untitled, 1990, ink on paper
11 7/8 x 16 3/4"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Untitled, 1998, ink on paper
11 5/8" x 16 1/2"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Wall, 1949, ink on paper
11 1/4 x 15 1/8"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Old Woman, 1949, ink on paper
11 x 15 3/8"
Courtesy of Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NYC
