The “Escaping beauty” exhibition of Michael Sukharev

On October 29th, 2010 in the LES Gallery in the House of Artists on Vavilova street the “Escaping beauty” exhibition of Moscow artist Michael Sukharev will open.

Those who will come to the “Escaping beauty” exhibition there will find "a former" space of life, in a city and suburbs. Megacities promptly change, but the architecture of former accords remains so close and desired. Certainly, it is inevitable that out perception of a country life, the way of living there and its esthetics changes; but tell, if sidings are more fascinating then timbered walls which have been given warmed by sun? Free countryside, picturesque way of country life in interiors of houses and landscapes situated near Moscow, and Moscow primordial with private residences and cozy lanes, will appear to the visitors of an exhibition. They will appear in harmony of former proportions, accords of buildings and space, in unique and escaping nowadays beauty. The master and the teacher of drawing and painting Michael Sukharev always taught his students to draw “from nature”, to draw the soul of the place, and nowadays he still continues to bring his students to nature, as he calls it : “ To draw the court yards”. The basic exposition is the graphic works of different years made from nature. From nature which is disappearing, more and more rare …

Michael Sukharev — about themes and art techniques:

”The Moscow artist in any way should represent a native city. Once when I was a schoolboy going to a painting school to the city palace of pioneers, my grandfather has presented me painter’s case. With this first painter’s case I walked through half of old Moscow. Then Moscow was absolutely another city … the Present old lanes occupied by Muscovites-natives … the Inhabited center of XX - XIX-XVI centuries … Trampled — bedraggled, as Paris, in cracks and patches, ancient, all remembering, the old woman-Moscow. The third Rome …

In the winter, for example, we came into a Moscow court yard, silent, small "prison cell" filled up with snow, we open our painter’s cases … snow, blizzard … you hide near a wall, under windows, snowflakes stick on paints and when the etude is almost ready, on a palette from eaves the huge snow cap … suddenly falls. And then we hear: "tuk-rat-tat" – knock on the next window at the ground floor … you lift your head and see – in a window light burns, and behind a curtain an old woman smiles and asks to come in! Frozen, we collect our painter’s cases, we find an entrance door, the old house, we come in … And that old woman gives us tea, she was watching us for a long time from behind the window …

Another interesting memory – when all the summer long you paint and draw landscapes somewhere in the Kaluga region among sand and wood, on roads and in thickets, for some reason smoothly as hallucinations, memory of a city revives, there is a feeling similar to the “feeling of Moscow”, the same as walking at the lanes. No, not because of contrast with country life, not nostalgia, but similarly — any general beginning, something ancient, harmonious, uniform, some certain general soul … And when in the end of a summer, late at night you come back in to the city, and looking from the suburbs you see a lake of lights. I will always remember: “… Oh, brothers! How happy I was, when churches and bell-towers, gardens, halls semicircle, has opened in front of me suddenly … How often, when far from Moscow, … I thought of you ….”

Long time ago, when I was member of the youth section of the Moscow union of artists, the commission that worked with young artists of Academy of Arts suggested me to make a series of drawings about Moscow. “Make, for example, a series of “ Moscow museums “, they have told to me … Since then and to this day I added drawing from nature to city picturesque etudes regular. A classical, academic stroke; strong and universal "tool". This graphic drawing means it is possible to depict apparently everything … Old masters were good at it. Drawing without looking at nature is especially fertile for work of imagination. … This is the art of graphic…

White tone always works in drawing, it fills everything, gives force and life … This male origin as color is in painting… And the line is always stuck to a white spot, merges with it, shows it, underlines, flaunts, and then becomes thing, almost to self-disappearance… However, existing in a single copy, original drawing is very gentle and vulnerable. It is not a strong polymer of dried up oil paint. When carelessly stored not very gingerly a thin carbon powder put on the top layer of a rough paper, could be erased easily; and the drawing is not the same any more. Something imperceptible disappears, and it won't return … That’s why it seems that it will be good to transfer a drawing into engraving. The same strokes, the same subtlety and ease, however etching paint safely pressed into a paper, and in the process of pressing it is possible to vary shades of an image on different prints …»

Video

Selected works

“Infa” by Igor Konovalov

Forever ours!

The “Escaping beauty” exhibition of Michael Sukharev

Video

Selected works

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