Spring Exhibition

Spring Exhibition
Monday 12 February to Saturday 24 February, 2007
Campbell’s Art Gallery, 1-5 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2HE

Spring Exhibition showcased the work of four contemporary Russian artists characterized by rigorous technical training combined with a remarkable freedom of expression in exploring the relationship between the aesthetic and the metaphysical qualities of paint.

This exhibition had brought together three established Russian artists Bato Dugarzhapov, Vera Yelnitskaya, and Mikhail Petrov, as well as one stirring new talent Vladimir Drozhalkin, whose paintings are exclusively in Salon Russe collection. All their works and relevant information as well as a lot of other glorious works of art are available on the Salon Russe website and will provide a meditation on the richness and diversity of the Russian art scene.

Russian painting has come in the west to be closely associated with three main artistic traditions or movements. It is impossible to ignore the oldest tradition in Russian painting, that of icon painting, which for many centuries was so neglected and misunderstood in the west, but which in recent decades has come to enjoy new popular appreciation assisted by ground-breaking exhibitions at the V&A and the Royal Academy in the nineties. A remarkable aspect of the development of iconography in medieval Russia was the speed at which Russian artists broke free of Byzantine models to develop their own original vision, while adhering to the rigorous models and compositional requirements of iconography. The rich tradition of medieval Russian iconography has inspired and influenced all subsequent generations of Russian painters to a greater or lesser degree.

The nineteenth century, which is regarded as the Golden Age of Russian literature also saw an explosion of creative energy and inspiration in Russian painting and saw the emergence of some of the world’s great landscape painters. Artists such as Shishkin, Kuindzhi, Nesterov, and Levitan developed a specifically Russian perception of nature permeated with the mystical possibilities arising from the dramatic scale, emptiness of the Russian landscape. Yelnitskaya and Dugarzhapov talk directly to this tradition, while Drozhalkin have found new ways of exploring the genre. The extraordinary Russian landscape itself still lies at the heart of modern Russian painting today irrespective of genre.

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth and the Silver Age in Russian poetry and literature began so too did a new generation of Russian artists emerge. Kandinsky is known as the father of abstract art, but he and a whole generation of Russian artists – Malevich, Rodchenko, Larionov, Goncharova and so on - experimented geometric form, shape and colour to create a new visual language. Not insignificant in these developments was the creative interplay between easel art and theatrical art as result of the burgeoning performing arts. In the early twentieth century the Moscow Arts Theatre became the most important and influential theatre in the world and, of course, the Ballets Russes, established in 1909, brought about a remarkable fusion of the greatest and most original new talent in painting, graphic design, dance and music. This fascination with the fundamentals of painting - form and shape and colour (both the presence and absence thereof) – can be seen clearly in the works of Petrov.

Russian painters have always been sensitive to the spirit of the age and the exuberance and decadence of the new Russia has inspired Salon Russe to seek out and bring to the attention of art-loving people outside Russia a new generation of artists. Russian painters combine a rigorous discipline and mastery of technique born of a training in some of Europe’s oldest art academies together with a vision of the world, which like the icons of the past appears at once strange and familiar to western audiences.

The goal of Salon Russe is to present beautifully executed paintings with a contemporary twist on the classic styles of past, as well as the work of artists that are striving to craft striking new images and ways of seeing our world.

Please contact Elena on 07917 871951 if you have any question about the exhibition or if you want to visit Salon Russe showroom in Christie's Fine Art Security Services, 42 Ponton Road, Nine Elms London SW8 5BA.