Ilya Tabenkin
dal 18/5/2005 al 18/6/2005
Segnalato da
18/5/2005
Ilya Tabenkin
Matthew Bown Gallery, London
The exhibition is a joint venture with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow. Artist's paintings - still-lifes of enigmatic, abstracted figures (hand-made by the artist from clay, plaster and papier-mache), sited in 'landscapes' constructed from paper and cloth - are a unique statement in the Russian art of the late Soviet era.
Paintings
Matthew Bown Gallery is
honoured to present the first London exhibition by one of Russia's
outstanding artists, Ilya Tabenkin (1914-1988). The exhibition is a joint
venture with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow. Tabenkin's
paintings - still-lifes of enigmatic, abstracted figures (hand-made by the
artist from clay, plaster and papier-mache), sited in 'landscapes'
constructed from paper and cloth - are a unique statement in the Russian
art of the late Soviet era. Tabenkin was born in Mozyr, Belorussia. His
early life was blighted by Stalinist repression: at the age of twenty, for
a trivial offence, he was sentenced first to several years in a
concentration-camp and then to internal exile. He managed, miraculously, to
enter the Soviet art world during World War II by destroying evidence of
his imprisonment and enrolling at the Moscow Art Institute. After the war,
he ploughed a lonely furrow. A long apprenticeship as a plein-air painter
was followed in the 1960s by concentration in the studio on still-lifes and
figure paintings. During this period, he studied closely the work of old
and Russian masters: Giotto, Masaccio, Zurbaran, Pirosmani, Tyshler, Falk.
In the early 1970s he commenced the series of numinous still-lifes that
established him as one of the major Russian painters of the late twentieth
century. The exhibition at Matthew Bown Gallery is accompanied by the
publication of a 186-page book on the artist, illustrated by approximately
370 colour plates.
Image: Still-Life, 1977, Oil on canvas, 52 x 61.5 cm
Private View: Thursday 19 May, 6.00-8.30 pm
Matthew Bown Gallery
First floor 11
Savile Row London W1S 3PG
Thursday-Friday, 12.00-6.00 pm Saturday 12.00-4.00 pm