Artist of the week: Mikhail Shemyakin
ARTinvestment.RU   17 мая 2013

May 4 70th anniversary of Mikhail Shemyakin. His life, in which the hard realities are intertwined with numerous hoaxes, striking in tune with the works — grotesque, imbued with the spirit of phantasmagoria, Venetian masks and tales of Hoffmann

May 4 was 70 years old Mikhail Shemyakin.

«Citizen of the World", who was born in Moscow, almost all of his childhood spent in East Germany, he studied in Leningrad, by circumstances became a U.S. citizen, lives mainly in France and remains an important conduit of Russian culture in the world. His life, in which the hard realities are intertwined with numerous hoaxes, striking harmony with the art - grotesque, surreal, imbued with the spirit of phantasmagoria, Venetian masks and tales of Hoffmann.

Mikhail Shemyakin was the son of a professional soldier Mikhail Petrovich Shemyakin (commandant of Koenigsberg, a professor of the Academy of them. Frunze) and actress Julia Baptist.

«My father, Kabardian thoroughbred, mountaineer, sooner lost loved ones, and was adopted by the White Guard officer Shemyakin. Adoptive father was killed during the Civil War. His father was the son of Red Army regiment in 13 years was one of the first orders of the Red Banner. But life was called Shemyakin - and have always been proud that belongs to the genus Kardanova ».

Until 1957 the family lived in the artist's father locations, mostly in Eastern Germany .

Art education Shemyakin received in the Soviet Union at the Art School of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin (now - St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin), where in 1961 he was expelled, according to some accounts, for "non-compliance with the socialist realism art world" and "aesthetic corruption of fellow students." However, these events did not affect the creative aspirations of the artist, and in 1962 in the editorial office of the Leningrad magazine "Star" had his first exhibition. This exhibition Shemyakin endorsed his views on art and the first declared itself to society.

Shemyakin fame brought him the next great (but short-lived) project, which caused public outcry . In 1964, the State Hermitage Museum opened "The exhibition of artists - working the economic part of the Hermitage. Towards the 200th anniversary of the Hermitage. " Exhibited the work of five artists Mikhail Shemyakin, Vladimir Ufliand, Lyagacheva , Valentina Kravchenko, Vladimir Ovchinnikov . The exhibition has had time to work one day (from 30 to 31 March 1964), on April 1 with the scandal it was closed, and the director of the Hermitage MI Artamonov was dismissed. The fact of the exhibition in one of the largest museums in the world, as well as the closing of a loud had quite a large impact on the continued growth in popularity of Shemyakin - it provided the artist attention from the international art community, contributed to the growth of interest in his work in the West, but years later, and in Russia.

show had another consequence - it marked the beginning of the creative team "Petersburg", definitively established by 1967. The backbone of its artists were Hermitage exhibition. Also in 1967, Mikhail Shemyakin, along with his friend, the philosopher Vladimir Ivanov worked on the development of the philosophical movement called "metaphysical sintetizm", which became a major ideological component of the "Petersburg».

Artist together with like-minded learned the art of pre-Columbian America, the ancient Venezuela, natives of Australia, ancient Egypt, the traditional Japanese art, seeking to understand the key features of the style of the ancient authors, looking for connections between these cultures and contemporary art. However, studying the ancient pictorial tradition, the band members themselves have sought not to repeat them, but to synthesize, process in your own style, keeping only the spirit and philosophical dimension. The task they have seen a combination of various styles and cultural traditions - the pure forms and lines of antiquity and value-plastic, three-dimensional, spatially diffuse artistic language of the ancient East into a new single entity, different from all existing.

The principles of metaphysical sintetizma Shemyakin and sells paintings and, especially, in the graph (so they created illustrations for works by ETA Hoffmann, for "Crime and Punishment" Fyodor Dostoyevsky), he also works in the technique painted watercolor prints. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, his romantic and grotesque images and characters have a special place in the life and work of Shemyakin. Hoffmann fantasies inspired by iconic imagery special characters Shemyakin.

In 1969, in New York the first overseas exhibition of the artist, and since that time his work has been exhibited in Europe, the USA, Brazil, Japan , Hong Kong.

But at home, in the Soviet Union, the official Soviet art has ranked Shemyakin to the "artists, pachkunam," so he had to look for a job outside the art system. In the 1960s, he had to change a lot of professions, he was a laborer, a laboratory assistant, scaffold.

With the assistance of the well-known galeristki Dina Verni (1919-2009) Shemyakin and his family moved to Paris, where was warmly received by the art world in France, in 1971, was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

Based in Paris, Shemyakin participated in the publication of the anthology "Apollo 77", which became the manifesto of Russian art collective "underground." In 1981, Shemyakin moved to the U.S., settling first in New York, where he was elected a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and then after receiving the 1988 American citizenship - Klaverak in a small town not far from New York.

abroad a lot and it works successfully. By 1970 - 2000, includes his most famous graphic series - "Carnival of St. Petersburg", "Metaphysical head", "Belly of Paris" and "Sidewalks of Paris", etc. As it is interesting to trace the development of the style of the artist - from vivid, pure inks and bulk, with a clear outline reminiscent of theatrical masks, characters, 1970s artist to the 2000s came to a lighter in color and pattern, sometimes close to the monochrome works. In this sense, the graphics Shemyakin, moving closer to his brushwork. Creativity Shemyakin fairly uniform, his language is always recognizable - business mix features a Venetian carnival, theatrical and surreal gofmanovskoy grim fairy tales and the grotesque. Whether it is a graphic, or a sculpture, or even applied art - his works are expressive and decorative, worked with a lot of details and images.

arts Shemyakin may be slightly different - a thick, hard, impasto. In the works are not so much oil it distorts the shape, how many pulls them reaching similarities with the Gothic Mannerism. He has been experimenting with crushing and simplification (flattening) of space and form, including in his painting techniques and findings of both the artists and the ancient art of the primitive, and representatives of modernism - from Picasso to Filonov .

In 1989 in the Central House of Artists (Moscow) for the first time held a retrospective exhibition of works by Shemyakin. In the mid-1990s, many Shemyakin and successfully exhibited in major museums in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Shemyakin - author of the famous monument to Peter I in the Peter and Paul Fortress, a monument to victims of political repression in the form of two sphinxes on the Robespierre (in front of the prison "Crosses") in St. Petersburg, as well as a large-scale multi-figure sculpture group "Children - victims of adult vices "on Bolotnaya Embankment in Moscow. His monumental sculpture adorns New York, Venice and many other cities.

However, one of his plastic art new interests are not limited to - in 2001 he designed the ballet "The Magic Nut" With the music . Slonimsky at the Mariinsky Theatre, and the costumes and sets for this ballet was shown at a special exhibition at the Museum of Private Collections Pushkin Museum. Alexander Pushkin in 2002, in 2005 the exhibition was held at the State Russian Museum.

In August 2002, the Foundation was founded by Mikhail Shemyakin, the purpose of which is to actively promote and beginners already well-known artists, musicians, photographers, creative teams, extensive charity work, as well as the study and protection of creativity Shemyakin (mostly - the identification of fakes).

Today Mikhail Shemyakin - a recognized master of the legendary art worker. In 1993 he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of literature and art, and in 1994 was awarded the French Order of "Knight of Arts and Letters." His works are in the permanent collections of major galleries and museums in the world.

not subsiding interest in his work and the art market. The database ARTinvestment.RU has 569 of his works, mostly, of course, graphics, and unique Draw (384 works), but is sold as painting and sculpture (96 and 33 respectively of work).

Shemyakin's presence in the auction market significantly both abroad and in Russia - rare example among contemporary Russian art. And that is important, and here and there of his work show quite competitive results. Top prices for them - about 40,000 pounds. Most often, the auctions can be found his graphic works from the series "Carnival of St. Petersburg", "Belly of Paris", "Metaphysical composition. Busts and heads. " Currently, according to ARTIMXp-RUS Graphics, an increase in profitability in the segment graphics Shemyakin Russian graphics (on May 7, 2013: 1.36%). However, most prices are set on the painting.

Record Prices shown his work, oddly enough, at a crucial time of crisis - 2007-2009. Three best results Shemyakin: 34,450 pounds for oil "Untitled" 1985 (Macdougall, London. 13.06.2008. Lot 39) for 38,268 pounds of silver went for wine decanter in the form of a clown and two cups (Macdougall, London. 11.06 .2009. Lot 568) and 29,300 pounds given for "Still Life with Lemons" in 1981 at the auction the auction house Christies (Christies, London, South Kensington. 29.11.2007. Lot 1260).

The biggest sale in Russia was recorded November 19, 2008 during the auction the auction house" Sovcom ": for his film" Carcass "1971 (lot 51) buyer paid 1.3 million rubles.

Maria Kuznetsova, AI

Sources : ec-dejavu.net , kck.ru , mihfond.ru , snob.ru , rg.ru , philosophy.spbu.ru , artinvestment.ru