Reviews

In October, 2015 Roman Fedchin gave an interview to the magazine "Living Italy" within the framework of the preparation of the Allrus Gallery project "Dolce Napoli-XXI".
To read the article in jpeg please click on the links from the article below or under the link to read in pdf.

Comfort me with capricious Chopin 
With sober Brahms... 

Osip Mandelstam 


Sometime at a concert hall, in recollection, 
A Brahms intermezzo will wound me… 

Boris Pasternak 

The 19th International Arts Festival “Art-November” is dedicated to Johannes Brahms, whose oeuvre and name are inextricably connected to Vienna. As part of the Festival, ASTI Gallery is hosting its “Moscow-Vienna-Moscow. Impressions of Vienna” exhibition in the halls of the State Institute of Art Sciences. These impressions are brought to us by a unique quintet of well-known artists – the “soloists”, Alla Bedina, Svetlana Lanshakova, Lyubov Lesokhina, Olga Lisenkova and Alexander Dragovoy, are all participants in the ambitious international project “Austria through the Eyes of Contemporary Russian Artists” (Österreich – aus dem Blickwinkel russischer zeitgenoessischen Meister der Malerei), which was launched two years ago by the ALLRUS Gallery. 

Each of our exhibitors – artists of the ASTI Gallery circle – has a distinctive artistic personality, a signature style, as well as unique vision and world view. For all of them, the experience of working en plein air in Vienna and the Austrian Alps became an inspiration to create paintings and drawings through which they express (and communicate to the viewer) their delight in the enchanting musical and artistic capital of Europe, and the surrounding landscapes of Austria. 

In this quintet of artists, everyone is a soloist, everyone carries his or her own tune, and everyone shows us her or his “own”, “personal” Vienna and Austria. This is the core creative component of the exhibition which we present to the guests of the “Art-November” festival. It is important to us to show how different and diverse artistic concepts and their implementations can be, ranging from the discrete and fragmented to the concrete and generalized. Each artist has a unique way of representing space-time correlations – from capturing the fleeting moment in time to complete rejection of hic et nunc. 

The viewer sees Vienna and Austria precisely through the eyes of these truly creative individuals, whose visual and emotional perception is sharpened, like the hearing of a musician with a perfect pitch. Intoxicated with the joyous Vienna, with its architecture, so justly compared to music set in stone, and to use Mandelstam’s words, “pampered by the music of light” in the Alps, the painters gave free reign to their remarkable passion for colour, while the graphic artists seemed unable to keep up with the motion of their uninhibited hand, as it submits to their admiring gaze. 

“The Vienna Quintet of Artists” gives us the quintessential image of Vienna and Austria, the image which is laid out in five separate solo melodies. At the same time, it is a preview of a large exhibition to be presented to the sophisticated Viennese public at the end of 2013. 

Natella Voiskunski
Curator of the exhibtion "Impressions of Vienna"
Art Director of "Art-November"


To read the detailed information in pdf (3,7 Mb., 18 pages) please click on the link from the picture bellow or find under the link.

The article of the Austrian newspaper "Boersen-Kurier" about the coming exhibition "Art Innsbruck", where the ALLRUS Gallery will present the project "The Russian Artists. View on Austria." in the form of the Special Show, February, 2013.

To read the article in the German language in pdf please click on the link from the article below or under the link.

The article of the Austrian newspaper "Standart" about the coming exhibition "Art Innsbruck", where the ALLRUS Gallery will present the project "The Russian Artists. View on Austria." in the form of the Special Show, February, 2013.

To read the article in the German language in pdf please click on the link from the article below or under the link.

Russia in the second half of the 19th century was home to several important philanthropists and collectors. Prime among them were Pavel Mikhailovich and Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov, from whose private collections evolved the gallery that today bears their name and is a world famous museum of Russian art. Sergei Shchukin and Ilya Ostroukhov followed their examples, as did later the likes of Henri Brocard, Ilya Zilberstein and Valery Dudakov; Zilberstein and the director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts created, under the museum's auspices, the Museum of Private Collections, and Zilberstein passed his collection to this museum, with some other notable collectors following suit.

Usually, collectors and philanthropists place a very strong emphasis on supporting national art schools, relying on their personal tastes and purely personal, subjective aesthetic convictions. The Allrus gallery presently features works by artists from the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries, who remain loyal to the traditions of Russian Realistic art. The gallery's founder Roman Fedchin is a distinguished personality, whose life experience includes academic research, successful business projects, and travels to different parts of the world; today he focuses his enthusiasm on art.

In 2010 the Allrus gallery celebrated its tenth anniversary, and its collection now numbers more than 300 paintings and drawings, including comprehensive selections of work by 15 artists from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities.

The founder did not specifically look out for major names, although the artists represented include painters honoured with such titles as People's Artist of Russia or Merited Artist of Russia, whose works are held by numerous museums and private collectors of high repute. The main criterion for selection was the professional skill of the artists, as well as the distinctive sincerity and emotional charge of their art, and the earthliness and faithful representation of life in their paintings and graphic works – qualities that are valued at all times. The collection is dominated by genres such as still-life and landscape, perhaps the least susceptible to the influence of passing political agendas; another aspect of interest is the presence in the collection of works by both Soviet and contemporary Russian masters, thus building up an impression of the succession of generations.

Paintings from the 1950s form the backbone of the Allrus gallery's legacy section, including several first-rate pictures by the People's Artist of the Russian Federation Nikolay Khristolyubov. This Soviet artist left his mark not only as a talented painter whose works are held at the Tretyakov Gallery, but also as a teacher who educated several generations of students at the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. There are no immediately recognisable signs of the Soviet period in his paintings, which have instead an air of timelessness. In terms of its style and preferred narratives, Khristolyubov's oeuvre is close to 19th-century art. His hunt-themed compositions (“Still-life with a Wood Grouse”, 1953; “Hunt in Spring”, 1954) evoke images from classic Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy or Ivan Turgenev, whose descriptions of nature are remarkably painterly. The master's still-lifes with flowers are marked by expressive sculpture-like forms (“Petunias against a Grey Background”, 1992). Some of his later works have a subtle lyrical quality (“Primroses”, 1993). Thanks to the collection assembled by Fedchin, we can compare pieces created by the artist at different times and see the undeniable creative continuity and consistency of the artwork of Khristolyubov, a follower of the traditions of the classic Russian Realistic school of painting of the 19th century.

Leonid Tikhomirov, a Merited Artist of the Russian Federation, belongs to the same generation as Khristolyubov, and has been similarly consistent in his creative evolution: his portrayals of nature are crafted in the style of Realistic landscape, in particular the so-called “mood landscape”. His paintings, the result of extensive travel across the country, feature views of central Russia and the Russian North. Riverside panoramas are one of Tikhomirov's most preferred motifs – in the painting “Morning on the Oka River” (1957), the silhouettes of boats close to the bank are echoed by lineaments in the background, and the artist conveys the calm in the air at that early hour. A different mood prevails in the painting of the same year “The Volga River”, where the foreground image, featuring a tightly constructed area and clumps of trees from which a flock of birds flies off, serves to arrest the viewer's glance before it proceeds to the expanse of the water sprawling down to the line of the horizon. One of Tikhomirov's best works in the Allrus collection is the painting “By the Riverside” (1994), evoking the landscapes of Vasily Polenov; here the seeming simplicity of the image is solidly backed by the artist's elegantly-crafted composition. The scintillating surface of the water and a distant bank glisten through the lacy pattern of flowers and grass; the viewer alternately peers into the depth of the painting, and returns to the foreground with its masterfully executed assortment of meadow grasses.

The legacy section at the Allrus gallery also includes pictures by the Merited Artist of the Russian Federation Andrey Lyssenko. The collection of the artwork of Lyssenko, the creator of landscapes, portraits, genre compositions and large-scale thematic paintings, consists mostly of sketches that reveal to the viewers the usually hidden mechanism of the artist's creative process. The pieces by the artist in the Allrus collection were created in the 1950s–1960s, and have qualities missing in his big finished compositions from the same period, such as a special emotional openness and fluid brushwork where every stroke is crisp and clear. This fully applies to the composition “The Skhodnya River” (1957), where the artist was primarily interested in the overall tonal contrasts of different parts of the image: the sky, tree tops, a dark strip of water and a light bank with patches of greenery in the foreground.

It is true for any artist that his sketches speak much about the times in which he lived. Thus, an interesting story is related in the small painted sketch “Arkady Lobanov at the Academichka” (1950). An artists' guesthouse, the “Academicheskaya dacha” (Academic Country Home, or “Academichka”), was founded in the 19th century and experienced a revival in 1948, accommodating many Soviet artists: Porfiry Krylov (of the Kukryniksy group), Fyodor Reshetnikov, Sergei Gerasimov, Georgy Nissky, Vladimir Gavrilov, Valentin Sidorov, the brothers Sergei and Alexei Tkachev and many others. Andrey Lyssenko visited the house as well. Once, while painting outdoors, Lyssenko sketched this rapid portrait of Arkady Lobanov, an almost forgotten today painter of the older generation, a man who had lived a difficult life and spent some years in the prison camps. Lyssenko and Lobanov were neighbours not only at the “Academichka”, but also in the famed Maslovka district of artists.

The unique creative environment of Maslovka had an impact on the lives of Lyssenko's descendants as well – his daughter and grandson, too, became artists. Presently, the Allrus gallery's collection features side-by-side works by the founder of the family of artists and Andrey Lyssenko Jr., who in search of his personal authenticity in art has created historical compositions, still-lifes and landscapes, conveying his experiences during his travel across Russia and Europe.

Andrey Lyssenko Jr.'s artwork opens the second section of the Allrus gallery's collection – taking us several decades forward, it features artworks that were created mostly during the last 10–15 years by young painters beginning their careers, and middle-aged masters, as well as some artists now over 80 who still have plenty of creative energy left.

This part of the collection, along with pieces created in the old-time classic Realist vein, includes works marked by modern, innovative influences, demonstrating the range of the collection owner's artistic interests.

Thus, next to Valentin Tereshenko's paintings and drawings deliberately focused on the past, we see works by experimenting artists. Modernist traditions get a second wind in compositions by the Merited Artist of the Russian Federation Alexey Lazykin, who transforms and “sharpens” the form of objects in his still-lifes.

Focus on unconventional themes and subjects distinguish pieces by the Merited Artist of the Russian Federation Mikhail Kopyov, who is not only an original painter and superb master of drawing but also a stage designer and a talented author.

An idiosyncratic style distinguishes paintings by Nikolay Burtov and Sergey Evsin, who, although belonging to the same generation, have developed into very different creative personalities within the Moscow and the St. Petersburg traditions of painting. Burtov's emotional style stands in sharp contrast to the visual language of Evsin, which is marked by nuanced colour design and subtle vibrations of texture.

The collection of the Allrus gallery also prominently features artists who, working in a more or less “salon” style, enjoy popularity and commercial success. This cultural phenomenon, which emerged in 19th-century art, experienced a comeback in Russia in the early 1990s, when a new art market was forming and the state and its expert committees, which had previously established rigid requirements for the final artistic (sometimes, artisan) product, were relegated to the background, while private clients and collectors, with their often highly specific and at the same time constantly changing personal tastes and preferences, came to dominate. Works by Eduard Anikonov, Vasily Polyakov and Sergey Radiuk, acquired for the gallery's collection soon after its inception, reflect this trend, which appears presently quite strong.

In conclusion, the creation of an art collection is a fascinating, albeit convoluted, process full of surprising discoveries and revelations. Collecting, especially the collecting of contemporary art, is a process of serendipity*. The factor of time plays a role here, too: normally, at an early stage of its development an art collection will be marked by stylistic imbalance, and sometimes an imbalance in quality, before becoming more streamlined at a later stage. 

One of the Allrus gallery's undeniably best recent acquisitions is artwork by the People's Artist of Russia Sergey Kupriyanov. His watercolours are distinguished by the remarkable harmony between the narrative and the visual language which immerses the viewer into a world of lyrical emotions related to different states of nature, time of day, and fluctuations of the artist's mood.

A special place in the gallery's collection is accorded to Aron Bukh, four of whose paintings have been recently acquired by the collector. Bukh's unflagging energy and unwavering devotion to art have become a legend – his entire life was dedicated to the service of art. Much in it was unusual, from a scorn for the conventions of everyday life to the state of divine enthrallment in which he improvised his pieces. The magic of his creative work is recorded in several videos: the artist used brushes, palette knives, spatulas and even his own fingers and palms to apply paints – touch after touch, layer after layer, as he interacted with the painting not only visually but tactually as well. It should be noted that Bukh's art, marked by a highly distinctive style that is inimitable, is linked to the traditions of painting of the Moscow school and Russian Cezannism, the Ecole de Paris and Modernism of the early 20th century. While his visual language was becoming more relaxed, the artist was able to implement his potential while remaining loyal to the concept of figurative art as such.

The collector's focus on the artistic individuality of every master represented in the collection distinguishes the gallery's policy, pivoted as it is around the noble mission of support for contemporary art in Russia.

The Allrus gallery is not solely focused on expanding its collection; it also arranges exhibitions and organizes international travel for Russian artists. All these activities together come to promote the practice of cultural exchange.

Liudmila Markina (The State Tretyakov gallery) and Roman Fedchin (The Allrus Gallery) have given an interview to the Austrian Russian-language newspaper "Dawai". Welcome to reading!

To read the article in the Russian language in pdf please click on the link from the article below or under the link.

The article of the correspondent of the Russian journal in Vienna "Sootechestvennik" Marina Kalashnikova during the exhibition of the Allrus Gallery in the RKI for 6 Russian artists (E.Anikonov, N.Burtov, V.Polyakov, A.Lyssenko, S.Radiuk, V.Tereshenko), from 5th till 19th November, 2008.

To read the article in the Russian language in pdf please click on the link from the article below or under the link.