Person of the week: Valery Babin
ARTinvestment.RU   08 июня 2020

In the artist's works — story not so much about life, but about life, about life, good and evil, love, work and the holidays

our Soul as a form,
is cast into the landscape of our childhood.
And then, wherever you were,
everywhere looking for familiar features.
Valery Babin

the well-Known Moscow painter Valery I. Babin — hereditary artist. His mother, Zinaida Petrovna Babin, a simple uneducated woman, from 1930-х years lived in the Urals, in the city of Berezovsky; after retirement, took up art and began to make clay toys — samovars, kettles, whistles, angels, the elders, the saints, and then began to write in tempera, was fascinated by sculpture. Today her name is well known in the artistic environment as one of the brightest representatives of naive art. But we know that the simple and unsophisticated work of naive artists can be as artistically interesting as the works of recognized masters. Zinaida Petrovna raised two sons, artists Valeria and Alexandra. Valery's wife, Lydia Putin and children, son Nicholas and daughter Catherine, also artists. Here's a rather big dynasty of artists Babinich.

Valery Babin was born in 1945 in the town of Berezovsky, Sverdlovsk region. In 1967-м he graduated from the painting Department of the Sverdlovsk art College named. I. Shadr, and in 1974-м — art faculty of the Moscow polygraphic Institute, course a wonderful artist and teacher A. D. Goncharov. Lives in Moscow, is actively involved in national and international exhibitions.

Speaking about the masters of communication that brought Valery I. real pleasure to be called artists Eugene Rastorguev and Illarion Golitsyn, a descendant of the princely family, a true intellectual, a great fine artist. In the creative passions Babin was, in his words, "crazy Petrov-Водкина", studying cézanne, a kind of discovery for him was the work of John. Morandi. But the most important source of inspiration for the artist himself considers the ancient Russian art, icons, frescoes, especially the saints of Kostroma of the XVII century. And besides — merchant provincial portrait, which became a real phenomenon in art, a special genre, close to old Russian Parsuna, which was created by a talented self-taught whose names are largely unknown.

Valery Babin considers himself an artist, one theme, and this theme — his small homeland, the Urals, the hometown of Berezovsky. He writes only what he knows and likes what he saw from childhood, — landscapes of the Russian countryside, streets, roads, characters, characters. The artist tends to be simple, unspectacular subjects, his paintings attract by their humanity, ability to see and reveal the poetic in what often seems ordinary and everyday. He manages to create a mood, full of inner harmony, naturalness. In the artist's works — story not so much about life, but about life, about life, good and evil, love,work and holidays: "a Sparrow on the windowsill, snow outside the window boggles suddenly unable to overturn the present to the past, to childhood, to become a reference point in future time". Work Babina are very simple names: "At the pier" (2014), "Top of the mountains" (2014), "House on the hill" (2009), "Cold spring" (2013), "White day" (2009), "the store" (2006), "Lodge" (2014), "the Tower" (2013), "Night lane" (2015), etc. But this only proves that the artist is the main thing — enduring human values that are close to each.

In painting Babina — has its own poetics, a harmonious unity, there are no external formal techniques, on the contrary, are recognizable, taken from life stories, solved in restrained colors, muted flavor, dominated by bright colors, dull-серых, blue, ocher, copper, malachite. "In the canvases he found what-то your space. As advised by Pavel varfolomeevich Kuznetsov, you need to find your space. Valery is a strong connection depth plane. Things is inseparable from observation, from life — and the sky, and snow, and houses, and horses, and all. And those differences that it all moves as if of generality, to abstract, and this gives even greater force to these things. They are built... they're like-то cleverly seen and very unexpected sometimes. Such motives — is so simple that you think the same motives, by which you passed, and it is as-то hooked. And that's the main thing", — said of him Illarion Golitsyn (gallerynazarov.ru).

"the Artist must be honest with himself to the end", — Babin said. In order to work he does not like, preferring to remain free and to do what feels and understands: "Art and with the world, and with God reconciles people. This is the only way of spiritual contact. Art — is a necessary thing for the existence of the human race".

Work Valeria Babina included in the collections of major Russian museums including the State Tretyakov gallery, State Russian Museum, many museums of the Russian Federation, they are in the domestic and foreign private collections.

Alexei Smirnov