Gely Korzhev: I Have the Right
by Anna Dyakonitsyna
Republished from the Tretyakov Gallery Magazine
Magazine issue: #3 2016 (52)
The retrospective of Gely Korzhev (1925-2012) at the Tretyakov Gallery is one of the most eagerly awaited shows in recent years. In today’s Russia, Korzhev’s art sounds a poignant and vital note. In a class of its own, his work was never fully understood by his contemporaries, just as it has yet to be fully appreciated by subsequent generations. His paintings, however, can provide an invaluable key to understanding the history of post-war Russian art, locating it within the broader context of world art of the second half of the 20th century.
There has never been a Korzhev exhibition on this scale before in Russia, and it pays worthy tribute to the exceptional diversity, complexity and depth of the artist's work, offering visitors the opportunity to discover their own "personal" Korzhev. The exhibition gathers together the main groups of the artist's works from museum and private collections in Russia and the USA. The timeframe covered is just as impressive, with every stage of Korzhev's artistic journey reflected in the works exhibited, from the paintings of the 1940s which he created as a student in evacuation to works he produced in the seclusion of his studio in the final years of his life. The sequence of works does not follow Korzhev's biography in any strict chronological sense but rather offers a dynamic, emotionally focused and lively journey through the main themes and images with which the painter's oeuvre was concerned.
As Korzhev himself noted, the key role in the development of his generation's worldview was played by the Second World War. "I was accepted into Art School in August 1939, and on September 1 war broke out in Europe. We are the war generation. Some of us fought at the front, others did not. But all of us came of age in its shadow,"[1] the artist once explained in an interview. The subject of war was one of the key themes in Korzhev's art, bringing with it notes of powerful drama and, at times, of conflict.
The exhibition opens with the painting Traces of War (1963-1964, Russian Museum). Among the most poignant works in the "Burnt by the Fire of War" cycle, this work, so dear to Korzhev's own heart, nonetheless made him the target of much criticism. "Traces of War" can hardly be called a portrait in the normal sense: it is rather, the artist suggests, a collective image - the "face of war". The disfigured face of a wounded soldier is shown en face against a light, neutral background: a monumental version of a passport photograph. The painter's view is akin to that of the camera lens, recording visible reality with impartial precision. Yet Korzhev here is far from an indifferent observer, who simply relates what he has observed. The artist's choice of hero, the way the face is enlarged, the grief and sober gravity of the situation define Korzhev's true feelings towards his subject. The soldier's disfigured eye that so repelled some critics, prompting accusations of the inappropriate portrayal of a monumental hero, is rendered clearly and convincingly, without excessive physiological detail. Later, Korzhev expressed thoughts on what is and is not permissible in art: "I think we should not overwhelm people with despair, fear, terror and ugliness. Such themes aren't for the arts. Affirmation of courage, beauty and kindness, even through the depiction of terrible scenes, is the main principle of the arts."[2]
Dame Laura Knight
Source: The Swan Gallery
Laura Knight, “Study of a Girl,” charcoal, 19.5” x 15.5”, private collection, © photo Bonhams
“I am just a hard-working woman,
Who longs to pierce
The mystery of form and color,
And with full hear
Add a mite to
The treasure of the world.”
– Laura Knight (1877-1970)
Laura Johnson (1877-1970) was born in Long Eaton in Derbyshire to Charles and Charlotte Johnson. Her father died not long after her birth, and Laura grew up in a family that struggled with financial problems. In 1889, at the age of 12, she was sent to France with the intention that she would eventually study art at a Parisian atelier. After a short time in French schools, she returned to England. There, at the age of 23, she entered the Nottingham School of Art, one of the youngest students ever to join the school. At school, Laura met one of the most promising students, Harold Knight (1874-1961), aged 27, and determined that the best method of learning was to copy Harold’s technique. They became friends and married in 1903.
Laura Knight, “The Beach” (ca. 1909), oil on board, 50.24” x 60.31”, Laing Art Gallery, United Kingdom, © photo Laing Art Gallery
In 1907, the Knights moved to the artists’ colony in Newlyn, Cornwall, alongside Lamorna Birch, Alfred Munnings and Aleister Crowley, where she painted in an impressionist style. The Beach (1908), widely admired both by other artists and the public, is an example of this style. Another interesting work is The Green Feather, which was painted in one day. In 1913, she made a painting that was a first for a woman artist, Self Portrait with Nude, showing herself with a nude model, fellow artist Ella Naper. In 1919, she established a studio in London and later became famous for her circus and theatre paintings.
After the First World War, the Knights moved to London, where Laura met some of the most famous ballet dancers of the day, such as Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with Lydia Lopokova, Enrico Cecchetti, and Anna Pavlova. Her most famous work dates from this period.
At the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, Laura Knight won the Silver Medal in Painting with the painting Boxer (1917). In 1929, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1936 she became the first woman elected to the Royal Academy.
From 1933, Dame Laura and her husband became regular visitors to Malvern. They found much inspiration for their work in the Malvern Hills and in the surrounding Worcestershire countryside. A blue plaque at the Mount Pleasant Hotel on Belle Vue Terrace, Great Malvern, commemorates the time they spent in the area.
During the Second World War, Knight was an official war artist. She worked on several commissions for the Ministry of Information’s War Artists Advisory Committee, and she was one of only three British women war artists who travelled abroad. After the war, she was the official artist at the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi war criminals. One result was The Dock, Nuremberg (1946).
Selected Works
Laura Knight, “Interior with Children Reading” (ca. 1906-07), oil on canvas, 13.75” x 11.25”, private collection
This charming picture was probably painted c.1906-1907 when Knight painted a series of intimate interior scenes of children and mothers in the Yorkshire coastal village of Staithes where she and her husband Harold had lived since they married just a few years earlier. Contemporary pictures depict similar scenes The Elder Sister (Rochdale Art Gallery), The Knitting Lesson (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston) and Dressing the Children (Ferens Art Gallery, Hull).
Laura Knight, “The Elder Sister” (ca. 1907), oil on canvas, 32.5 x 25 cm, Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service, United Kingdom
Laura Knight, “Boys (aka The Boys Newlyn Cornwall)” (1910), oil on canvas, 60” x 72.25”, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, © photo Johannesburg Art Gallery, First exhibited London: Royal Academy 1910 No. 360
Laura Knight, “Marsh Mallows” (ca. 1914), oil on canvas, 30.25” x 25.25”, private collection, Catalogue Note Sotheby’s
In a summer garden shimmering with dazzling sunlight, a young woman gently lifts up a marshmallow flower and dreams in languid reverie. Her beautiful profile is set against a profusion of contrasting color applied with thick, broad strokes conveying the heady atmosphere of a perfumed garden in full bloom. Brilliant sunlight illuminates her golden hair and skin with the heat of midsummer and plays sensuously over the textures of her pale dress. This masterpiece of British Impressionism was painted in 1914 at the moment when Laura Knight’s work was reaching the zenith of its maturity. It is full of vitality and joy and captures the artistic freedom that Knight felt at this period in her career – painted only a year after she exhibited her famous self-portrait with a nude model (National Portrait Gallery, London), a painting which made a forthright claim of independence and confidence as an artist and as a woman in a man’s world. Marsh Mallows was painted in Cornwall, where Laura lived for a number of years.
Laura Knight, “A Ballet Dancer” (19??), oil on canvas, 23.43” x 18.11”, private collection
Catalogue Note Bonhams
Soon after moving to London with her husband, Harold, in 1919, Knight was invited backstage during the third season of the Ballets Russes. According to Knight, “this put a proper finish to [her] nostalgia for the sea She became close friends with Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova (1892-1981), who allowed Knight to use her dressing room as a studio, a privilege she describes vividly in her autobiography: “The dressing room of such a ballerina has a unique glamour. The dressing-table, crowded with pots of creams, powder puffs, trays of make-up, a comb, and pink ballet-shoes with ribbons hanging down [...] Lydia's own dainty figure is seen as she steps into the round opening of her white tarlatan skirt. Into this she lifts her lovely limbs clad in rose-colored silk, all ashine in movement.”
The present lot is an excellent example of Knight’s unique backstage experience observing the dancers. Various colorful costumes are draped around the dressing room, with the strong light of the dressing table mirror echoing the dramatic effect of a stage spotlight, illuminating her slight figure and the stiffly starched texture of her white skirt. The shadowed background hints at the unseen buzz of activity and anticipation beyond – the orchestra tuning up, dancers loosening up their limbs in the coulisses, the excited murmur of the audience taking their seats. Knight captures a very intimate moment with the ballerina, her stance centered and steady, taking a moment to herself to reflect before leaving her dressing room for the performance.
Laura Knight, “The Ballet Girl and the Dressmaker” (1930), oil on canvas, 38” x 48”, private collection, © photo Sotheby’s
Catalogue Note Sotheby’s
‘Laura was undoubtedly happiest when painting informal scenes backstage or dancers in their dressing rooms… Her dressing-room paintings express this joy in her surroundings…’
– Caroline Fox, Dame Laura Knight, 1988, p.52
“...this painting displays no self-conscious artifice. The dancer is caught mid-glance looking left, her body arrested in movement, while her dresser fixes a flounce on her skirt. Notwithstanding the delicate color harmonies, the pink tights and ballet shoes and petal-like net of the skirt, here there is authority, power and control.”
– Barbara C. Morden, Laura Knight – A Life, 2013, pp.173-174
Laura Knight loved the ballet and had a particular fascination with the backstage rituals of the performers which she captured with the intimacy and sensitivity of someone who was closely observing and being inspired by not just the starlight and glamour but also the more domestic aspects of stage life. The Ballet Girl and the Dressmaker was commissioned by the vacuum-cleaner millionaire H. Earl Hoover in 1930 when he visited Knight’s studio and saw her last ballet picture, entitled Motley and showing a dancer and clowns in the wings being prepared to take to the stage. Motley was too large for Hoover so he asked Knight to paint him a similar back-stage scene. Knight designed a clever composition; ‘…of two interlacing pyramids. To me it is more difficult to arrange two equally important figures together than three. However, my pyramids worked and the picture went through from start to finish without the slightest alteration, one of those lucky ones that paint themselves without disagreement with the painter.’ (Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint, 1936, p.322) The model was a dancer named Barbara Bonnar; ‘…a vital and sparkling young creature, [who] was rehearsing for a show at the time and many of the sittings had to take place in the early morning before she went to the theatre.’ (op.cit Knight, p.322). A detailed figure drawing for the painting is in the collection of Nottingham City Art Gallery. The artist’s own dressmaker, Miss Fergusson, posed for the woman making the alterations to the dress; ‘her hands and type were perfect.’ (op.cit Knight, p.322). The picture was originally intended to hang in the office of the new headquarters of Hoover’s business in Chicago but Hoover was so delighted with it that he decided to hang it in pride of place at home. It has remained there ever since.
When the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg it was reproduced in several newspapers which made it briefly famous across America and beyond. Knight was particularly delighted to receive a letter from Harry Backhouse of The Ranchmen’s Club in Calgary, Canada; ‘The spelling is exact – almost too wonderful to be actually written by a cowboy. It was, I know, quite genuine, a tribute that warms my heart whenever I think of it. I value that letter and shall always keep it.’ (op.cit Knight, p.324). The letter reads; ‘Me and Alkali Alf and Cottonwood Bill an the Cow Foreman ave just been drinkin of your ealth in ‘The Bucket of Blood.’ We’ve come to the conclusion that you be all right an if ever you be in the Great Open Spaces where men are men you must have a glass of beer along o’ we. We be just a lot of ignorant undedicated cow-punchers an pologrooms, without book larnin, an we know nothing about eyebrow art critickism. In them circumstances you won’t feel flattered when we tell you that you done a dam good job when you painted that pitcher ‘Ballet Girl an Dressmaker.’ Alkali Alf sez that the drorin an the modelling o’ them features an them limbs is good enough for Mike Angello or Rembrandt… The Cow Foreman sez the Ballet Girl be a helluva swell-looking jane with the right kind o’ legs for topping off bronks and the face such as only grows on gals wot as quite the right sort of savvy. An the dressmaker? Yes! Wot abart er? Cottonwood Bill wot wos born in Derbysher, which is a dam good place to be born in, sez that dressmaker be a dam capable woman. You can tell she be absoloot master of er job. Cottonwood zes she be the sort of dame wot ud look after er man and bring er kids up respectable… Eres to you Laura, and we hope that this summer you’ll flabbergast the ole bloomin Royal Academy. An don’t forget we be a watchin of yer.’ (op.cit Knight, pp.224-4)
Laura Knight, “A Balloon Site, Coventry” (1943), oil on canvas, 40.35” x 50”, Imperial War Museums, United Kingdom, © photo IWM (Imperial War Museums)
Second World War Artist’s Studio in a Bomber Factory: Charge hand Wilfred Powell helps Dame Laura Knight to set out her paints on a work bench in readiness for the day’s work. During the Second World War, Knight was an official war artist. She worked on several commissions for the Ministry of Information’s War Artists Advisory Committee, and she was one of only three British women war artists who travelled abroad. Her works during this period include In For Repairs (1941), A Balloon Site, Coventry (1942), Ruby Loftus screwing a breech-ring (1943), Take Off (1944), Factory Workshops and Land Girls, amongst many others.
Laura Knight, “Portrait of Lady Hayter” (1960), oil on canvas, 26.5” x 22”, private collection
The sitter in the present lot is Margaret Alison (d. 1986) who was the second wife of Charles Archibald Chubb, 2nd Baron Hayter (1871-1967). Following the First World War and as Peggy Pickard she embarked on a career as an actress appearing at the Old Vic with a number of actors who would subsequently become famous including Eric Portman, Brenda Bruce and Elizabeth Allan. During her time at the Old Vic she appeared in four Shakespeare plays including playing Hippolyta in Two Noble Kinsman. In 1928, Margaret joined the Bristol Little Theatre Players as their leading lady and stared in no less than fourteen productions in her first year including as Nadya in Noel Coward’s The Queen was in the Parlor. After a successful period performing in Bristol her acting career rather sadly seems to have come to an unexplained end, just when it appeared that she was destined for even more important roles. After the war Margaret Alison was married to Lord Hayter on the 23rd March 1949, the couple settled in Kensington before moving to Witney, Oxfordshire.
As well as an actress she was an accomplished sculptress and as Alison Pickard she produced a number of impressive bronze works most significantly of the famous Polish dancer and director Yurek Shabelevsky which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1938, no. 1532 and last sold at Christe’s in 1994.
This portrait painted in 1960 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1961 is a fine and elegant example of Laura Knight’s supreme skill as a portrait painter and shows that Knight’s command of painting was retained well in to her eighties. The delicate palette of the work combined with the fine detail of Margret's dress and the shimmering silk of the cushion imbue the painting with a genteelness and subtle refinement befitting a lady of Lady Hayter’s status.
Mother (1964-1967, Tretyakov Gallery) shows something of the same approach. The artist's pity and compassion in the face of unbearable loss are clear. This sense, indeed, is often present in Korzhev's best works, from his war paintings to the more modern canvases, landscapes, nudes and biblical scenes.
Korzhev's essentially humanist approach is one of the key features of his work, setting him aside from other masters of figurative art of the second half of the 20th century such as the British artists Francis Bacon or Lucian Freud. The fact that Korzhev's creative legacy is on a par with that of such widely acclaimed Western realists becomes especially evident when one appreciates the spectrum of the works shown at the retrospective: never before has Korzhev's art been so comprehensively displayed.
The Burnt by the Fire of War cycle is followed by several works that came to be seen as real signs of their time. They are key paintings in Korzhev's development as an artist, too: Lovers (1959, Russian Museum) and the triptych Communists (1957-1960, Russian Museum). In these canvases Korzhev's innovative, pioneering spirit shone clearly forth for the first time.
These works put Korzhev at the head of his contemporaries, the generation of artists who were seeking new approaches in the late 1950s and 1960s, during the "Thaw". Having defeated Nazi Germany, at that time the Soviet Union was enjoying more positive times. The hardships and privations of war had led to greater appreciation of the intrinsic value of life, the "here and now", a peaceful sky over one's head, and of simple human pleasures and concerns. In literature, cinema and art alike, something of a "rehabilitation" of reality was taking place. This search for a new truth became the new standard raised by a whole generation of artists.
Korzhev's Lovers and Communists were among the key works which engendered the so-called "severe" style, one of the main trends in Soviet art of that time. Unlike his genre paintings and lyrical approach of the 1950s, these works strike a particular balance between theme and execution, most appropriate to the spirit and complexity of large-scale works. The journey to this point was not an easy one, however. Korzhev later recalled this: "In Lovers, there is an echo of war. It was painful to work on it. First I imaged a scene: the seashore, two figures, and a motorcycle. This came to me instantly. But who these people were, what their life stories were like - I didn't know. The composition wouldn't come together. Quite by accident, I met an older man who worked as a laboratory assistant in a research institute. He told me about himself and his life. When he was very young, still a boy, he participated in the Civil War and organized collective farms. At the outbreak of World War Two, he joined the volunteer infantry. He was wounded at the front. The man's life, so closely intertwined with the life of Russia, appeared very interesting and significant to me. I realized that such a person was dear and close to me, and he became the hero of my painting. My initial idea became filled with meaning, the content materialized and the painting came alive."[3]
In his triptych Communists, Korzhev opts for an unexpected approach, far from a conventional historical or everyday treatment of the subject. The topics chosen hark back to the Russian Civil War, with workers and Red Army soldiers featured as the heroes of these mighty paintings. Korzhev's comprehensive vision and profound interpretation of historical material allow him not only to connect his subject with a specific period in the life of his homeland, but at the same time, also to situate it within a broader historical context. The heroism of the Russian Civil War recalls the more recent events of World War Two, a conflict which Korzhev himself had witnessed in his youth. Furthermore, the theme of heroism, the portrayal of an act of courage and determination, takes the work a step further, into the realm of the timeless.
The best parts of the triptych, according to Korzhev himself, were the central and left paintings. Raising the Banner (1960) is one of Korzhev's key works and could be said to carry his main ideological message.[4] Form and content in this canvas are truly one, a vital feature in a painting of this size. The dynamic composition shows an act of will, a fateful decision that will change the course of events. The size of the painting and of the main figure, the close-up format, the composition resembling a still from a film, and the texture of the image enable Korzhev to create a form that transports the artistic action out of the immediate narrative and into the existential. This rare quality is precisely what distinguishes the best works of outstanding masters of historical painting. The late Valery Turchin, one of a now-departed circle of generalist art historians, saw certain parallels between Korzhev's art and that of Vasily Surikov. Of his generation, Gely Korzhev had perhaps the keenest and fullest appreciation and understanding of Russia's artistic tradition, Turchin suggested.[5]
Korzhev's art from different decades offers a prime example of a philosophical view of history. Like no other post-war painter, Korzhev showed the crucial turning-points of 20th century Russian life. The war appears here in all its tragic complexity, as do its traces and legacy, still present in the everyday lives of Russians and in the fate of the entire country.
Clouds of 1945 (1980-1985, Tretyakov Gallery) is one such philosophical painting. It shows a man who has lost a leg in the war, with an elderly woman dressed in dark mourning clothes. Both are pensive, caught up in memories from the past. Behind the figures lies a panoramic landscape - a large meadow beneath a vast, tranquil sky. This backdrop brings the narrative back to the present day. "The war is over, he is missing a leg but he is still happy. He looks at the clouds, smells the grass: life has won,"[6] Korzhev explained. Time, in this painting, is historically specific: inevitably, it flows onwards. Yet the past rises up again, in the memory of future generations. The artistic metaphor for time that Korzhev creates in this work, allowing past, present and future to intermingle in their complex ways, shows just how deeply the artist felt the very spirit of history.
Conversation (1975-1985, Russian Museum) is another of Korzhev's works that cannot be simply summed up in terms of chronological events. The composition came into being due to a subsequently abandoned official commission. The Awards Ceremony Hall in the House of the Government of the Russian Federation (RSFSR) was to be decorated with a group of five large-scale paintings. Korzhev's initial proposal so startled officials, however, that the commission was awarded instead to Andrei Mylnikov, under whose direction a series of tapestries was created. The form and subjects of Korzhev's works proved simply too unconventional. Following the incident, Korzhev continued working on Conversation, no longer constrained by official guidelines. The resulting work portrays the people with their leaders in an unexpected manner, going against accepted views on how this should be depicted. In this, "Conversation" is highly unusual, created as it was in the later years of the USSR.
The 1980s proved an important turning-point in Soviet history. The drive to reinvigorate Soviet power under the banner of perestroika ultimately led to its demise. For some, these new and different times proved full of opportunity; to others, they brought confusion and paralysis. For Korzhev, it was a trying time: his beliefs and ideals were in acute contradiction to the new reality. This, for the mature artist Korzhev, was indeed one of the key problems in the post-Soviet period. In 1976, the painter stepped down as head of Russia's Artists' Union, and in 1986 he stopped teaching. After this, his public role in society was reduced to a minimum, and he saw few people outside his family and a circle of close friends. His efforts, in this period, were directed mostly towards his art, the main focus of his life.
Thus, Korzhev found himself in silent opposition to the new Russian leadership. Unwavering in his views, in the late 1990s the artist refused a state award bestowed upon him by the government of the new Russian Federation.[7] In a note explaining his decision, Korzhev wrote of his motives: "I was born in the Soviet Union and sincerely believed in the ideas and ideals of the time. Today, they are considered a historical mistake. Now Russia has a social system directly opposite to the one under which I, as an artist, was brought up. The acceptance of a state award would be equal to a confession of my hypocrisy throughout my artistic career. I request that you consider my refusal with due understanding."[8]
As a mature artist, Korzhev did not seek to openly criticize the political or social system of contemporary Russia. This is not, indeed, part of the artist's role. His experience and views were, however, inevitably reflected in his later works. Korzhev's thoughts and feelings came alive in his canvases, and also on paper: throughout most of his life, the painter kept a diary. He also left behind copious notes with reflections on art, contemporary culture and social issues. Not intended for publication, these manuscripts and diaries are virtually unknown to the public: the rich archive is in the keeping of Korzhev's family.[9]
Leaving his public duties behind and retreating to the seclusion of his studio, in the latter decades of his life Gely Korzhev was able fully to realize virtually all his creative ambitions. What joy this is for an artist!
The geographical location of Korzhev's artistic legacy has naturally been affected by the way in which circumstances split the artist's working life into two parts. Thus, most of his large-scale canvases from the Soviet period became key pieces in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery, as well as various regional museums.
The second part of Korzhev's artistic legacy, equally important for understanding his oeuvre, is to be found in private institutions and collections worldwide. The large-scale canvases of the last three decades of his life, as well as his early works, sketches and composition studies remain virtually unknown to the wider Russian public. Many of his important paintings were taken out of Russia without having once been exhibited in the artist's homeland.
This retrospective thus offers a wonderful opportunity to consider the different parts of Korzhev's creative legacy together, and to gain a deeper appreciation of his artistic range and complexity as a painter. Talking of his style and methods in art, Korzhev used the term "social realism", placing great importance on both the first, and the second word in that description. Looking back at the past, he mused: "I believe it [Socialist Realism] should have been named 'social realism'. Socialism is associated with politics, but instead it should be aimed at social issues. Then it would have been powerful."[10] This was the type of realism to which Korzhev aspired.
Despite all the suffering he felt with his inner rejection of life in post-Soviet Russia, the artist never ceased to be concerned with, and about the Russian people: the plight that many had experienced with the collapse of the USSR, and the potential that still remained. In an interview given in 2001, Korzhev described his social standpoint as an artist: "For those who are running the country I have, as Saint-Exupery put it, a deep dislike. Those circles that are currently flourishing and are now at the forefront hold no interest for me. As an artist, I see absolutely no point in studying that part of society. The people who do not fit into this pattern, however - now they are of interest. The 'superfluous' men, the outsiders - today, they are many. Rejected, ejected from normal life, unwanted in the current climate... I am interested in their fate, in their inner struggle. As far as I am concerned, they are the real, worthy heroes for the artist."[11] These new heroes indeed began to populate Korzhev's works, as the artist took on the social issues facing contemporary Russia in works such as Rise, Ivan! (1995, Institute of Russian Realist Art), Adam Andreevich and Eva Petrovna (1996-1998, private collection, Moscow) and Parental Rights Revoked (2006, Institute of Russian Realist Art).
The contemporary Russian reality which Korzhev observed in the final decades of his life did not inspire the master to create works of heroism, or to laud the triumph of the human spirit. In Korzhev's eyes, people had become smaller, pettier. Preoccupied with trivial everyday concerns, they sought solely to satisfy their bourgeois pride and basic human needs. It is perhaps no coincidence that during this period Korzhev came to dream up for his grandson a fantastical beast that subsequently gave rise to the large Tyurlikis series (that name being, as Korzhev himself put it, somewhat "abstract and difficult to explain").[12] The heroes of this cycle are mutants of different shapes and sizes: half-animals, halfbirds, possessing all the failings and weaknesses of human beings. The poignancy and unexpected resonance of the series were such that for a time Korzhev's work came to be seen as resembling that of the contemporary artist camp, a group with which the master would certainly not have associated himself. Certain works from this series, along with Korzhev's Don Quixote paintings were shown at Moscow's Regina Gallery in 1993. This exhibition, in a space usually linked with a very different type of art, was, however, as far as this trend went: naturally, Korzhev was simply too major a figure to be absorbed by such groupings.
All this only adds poignancy to the self-reflective works of the mature Korzhev, among which is his series of nudes, in which the painter set himself the striking task of portraying the female form in particular historical and social settings of the Soviet period. The most impressive work of the series is undoubtedly his Marusya (1983-1989, private collection, USA).
No less striking is the painter's Still-life with Hammer and Sickle (2004, private collection, USA), a work that contrives to return the now somewhat abstract symbols of the Soviet era back to reality. Indeed, still-lifes have a special place in Korzhev's legacy. The artist painted them frequently and with great passion, using the genre as a means of setting and resolving artistic tasks around meaning and composition. Korzhev himself described the process: "Think of the psychological still-life. It is necessary to find a new approach to the execution itself, too. Striking chiaroscuro, definitely some artificial light, maybe a naked flame (a candle or kerosene lamp).
"A person's things, a book, a teapot, a basket, some rags etc. The main thing, though, is to portray the state of the person who owns those things. Their occupation, thoughts, lifestyle, even the events that could have taken place just before the scene shown to the viewer."[13] The objects in Korzhev's still-lifes - an axe, a hand drill, some worn shoes, a Russian hat and jacket, clay pitchers, simple enamel pots and pans, a glass with a rag soaked in milk - are clearly present, convincingly material: they recall not merely the everyday life of Soviet times, but in a far broader sense the traditional lifestyle of generations of Russians.
"I am more of a still-life painter than anything,"[14] Korzhev would say of himself. Indeed, his still-life composition technique of placing large objects in the foreground with a little shallow, barely defined space behind is clearly visible in the majority of his large-scale narrative paintings, from the iconic works of the 1960s to the cycles created in his final decades.
Korzhev's works from those secluded years in his studio contain many themes and images from classic books, interpreted in a new light. Literature had always been among Korzhev's main interests: he is often seen as a thinker, something of a dramatist, an artist who strives to portray not merely the immediately visible physical plane, but also the internal logic of events. Korzhev's profound respect for literature and the links between his art and well-known classics further show just how deeply, and in what a unique way the artist felt and interpreted the Russian artistic tradition.
Dedicated to Don Quixote and other heroes of the much-loved novel by Miguel de Cervantes, Korzhev's Don Quixote series consists of 15 or so works created over two decades. "As a student I was already fascinated with the image of this fearless champion of justice," the artist reminisced. "One should not 'blame' Cervantes for that - it also had to do with our family. My father's attitude to life, his pursuits and failures reminded me of this indefatigable truth-seeker. As for my mother, well, she was exactly like Sancho Panza. Even the way they both looked - my father, tall and lean, and my mother, all round and rather small - was quite in line with those literary characters. But that was not all. Naturally, it never crossed my mind that I should use this to create my family's portrait. It was more complicated than that. It was important for me to understand and then communicate through my art the nobility and generosity of human spirit, and the willingness of human beings to perform feats of valour for a noble purpose."[15]
As Korzhev pointed out, "Russians have always viewed Don Quixote seriously, even as a symbolic hero."[16] Further developing the train of thought expressed by Ivan Turgenev in his essay "Hamlet and Don Quixote", Korzhev elaborates on Cervantes' concept: "What would happen if a person with beliefs and moral development akin to those of Christ were to appear in real life?"[17]
It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that at the retrospective Korzhev's Don Quixote series leads into his biblical cycle. The artist turned to subjects from the Old and New Testaments following the death of his parents in 1986. For Korzhev the thinker, with his wealth of life experience, the main focus of this significant new development in his creative endeavour was to capture the internal logic of the story, based on the moral and ethical views that determine human actions. Most works of the biblical series are highly charged with the dramatic significance of events that have taken place, or are being anticipated - such as Judas (1987-1993, private collection, USA) or Carrying the Cross (1999, collection of the artist's family, Moscow). Amid the pain and suffering, however, Korzhev suggests that there is a place for love. For instance, "Deprived of Paradise" (1998, private collection, USA) is filled with intensely intimate emotion: Adam bears Eve in his arms as if she were the most precious thing on Earth.
The other paintings in the cycle are similarly uncanonical, filled instead with the artist's personal feelings. In Autumn of the Ancestors (Adam and Eve) (1997-2000, private collection, USA), Adam's facial features recall those of the artist Alexei Gritsai, a close friend of Korzhev's. In Korzhev's work, the wisdom and humility of biblical characters are acquired not merely by God's will, but as the result of a life lived with integrity.
A major solo exhibition always offers new ways of interpreting the work of an artist. In the Soviet and postSoviet cultural context, the creative phenomenon of Gely Korzhev has remained a key landmark, sometimes clearly evident, sometimes receding a little in the face of the tumultuous political events of Russia's history. Creating his own dynamic language, Korzhev breathed new life into the realist tradition, proving convincingly that the expressive potential of painting as an art form had certainly not yet been exhausted. Despite dedicating many years to teaching and helping a number of talented painters to develop, Korzhev did not create his own school. Not one of his pupils has been able to outstrip their master, to go further in interpreting the tradition of large-scale paintings and the modern potential of realist art. In studying Korzhev's creative legacy, we gain new clarity about problems facing contemporary culture such as the social role and mission of the artist, the current state and prospects of the realist school, and the future of painting itself as an art form.
A visit to this first large-scale Russian retrospective of Gely Korzhev's art, one which has brought together the main body of the painter's work, will allow art-lovers to ponder and to evaluate his legacy, offering a space for assessment and lively debate that will once again prove beyond doubt the relevance of Korzhev's art today.
Sources
- "Stoykost' Otverzhennykh" (Resistance of the Outcasts). Interview with G.M. Korzhev // "Zavtra'' (Tomorrow) newspaper, July 31 2001. #31 (400). P 8. Hereinafter, Zavtra.
- From Gely Korzhev's interview, excerpt published in "Raising the Banner: The Art of Geli Korzhev". September 10 2007-January 5, 2008: [exhibition catalogue]. Minneapolis, 2007. P. 74. Hereinafter, Raising the Banner .
- Raising the Banner. P 71.
- This painting provided the title for the solo exhibition of Korzhev's work at the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis, 2007-2008.
- Turchin, V 'The Art of Gely Korzhev' // Raising the Banner. P 42-52.
- Raising the Banner. P 79.
- Korzhev was to be awarded the Russian Order of Friendship and the Order for Services to the Fatherland. According to the painter's daughterIrina Korzheva, both subsequently remained with the Russian Academy of Arts.
- Raising the Banner. P 90.
- In the catalogue of this retrospective, and in "Gely Korzhev: Iconothek. Gely Korzhev Foundation of Cultural and Historical Heritage". Moscow, 2016, selected excerpts from Korzhev's manuscripts are published for the first time.
- Raising the Banner. P 29.
- Zavtra. P 8.
- Translated from Zaitsev, Ye. "A Zhizn Prodolzhayetsia (But Life Continues)" [electronic source] // Slovo, 2003, no. 4. Accessed at http://www.hrono.info/slovo/2003_04/zai04_03.html on 15 March 2016. Hereinafter, Zaitsev.
- Gely Korzhev archive. First published in the catalogue to the Moscow retrospective, "Gely Korzhev". Moscow, 2016. P 165.
- Raising the Banner. P. 108.
- Zaitsev.
- Raising the Banner. P. 28.
- Ibid, p. 29.
