Person of week: Vladimir Brainin
ARTinvestment.RU   27 июля 2020

Vladimir Brainin — portraitist of the capital. His paintings with bold photographic angles, vibration of color and light, with a slight melancholic tinge, resemble rather the dreams or daydreams, rather than the actual portrait area

Vladimir Brainin — recognized artist, the fame which came in the late 1970-х — early 1980-х. His work combines a love of classic art and modern aesthetics of perception, intellectual and sensual beginning, the philosophical depth and emotional experience.

Brainin is considered an artist one topic "singer of Moscow", his painting called "portrait of the city". And indeed, throughout life Brainin writes a series of paintings about Moscow, the image of which he sees unusual option for us. According to the critic V. Mayland, paintings Brainin "not so much the particular scenery as a kind of a romantic space of his past".

Born Vladimir Brainin in 1951 in Moscow. In 1968 he graduated from art school, Krasnopresnensky district. In 1968-1970 worked as an artist-декоратором in the Theater. VL. Mayakovsky. From 1968 to 1973 he studied painting in the Studio of E. A. Dodonova, and from 1971 to 1976 — at the Moscow polygraphic Institute at the art-графическом faculty. Since the late 1970-х years Brainin is a regular participant in exhibitions, he is one of those artists who tirelessly, very productive, with incredible consistency works a lot...

the Seventies — formative period of the artist — coincided with the time when it started to disappear stylistic and thematic unity in the Soviet art when the art community began to actively suck the ideas of modernism and postmodernism. At this time there was a new and largely unfamiliar to the audience view of the city. Painters of new generation reflected in his landscapes than external familiar features of the capital, and created a different image of the city. This wave and picked up by Brainin. His paintings reflected the General atmosphere of life, including city life with its inherent unpredictability and variability: "I watch for changes, removing irritation". Brainin builds compositions, framing them like a photographer, creating on canvas the illusion of a landscape by using light and color.

the artist's Words sound like a motto: "I feel like dying my city. I was born here and know it well enough. But the current society is hostile to me compared with the former 20 years ago, hostile not politically, not emotionally — to me it just interferes with life".

In the paintings Brainin — Moscow abandoned yards, fragments of houses with stucco facades, blank walls, crannies, smokestacks, square, is just images of separate entrances, foundations of houses, stone lions. Data consolidation, they attract, fascinate, transform into a special mystical environment in which as iffrozen past. I want to take a closer look these Shcherbina, cracks, dents on the surface of the walls. In these landscapes has its own magic, the mystery. The artist feels a sense of nostalgia for this bygone reality. Here, for example, he speaks of the confectionery factory "Bolshevik": "the Sweet factory. Plus this sweetness —, it is because the difference in the consideration of the house here-вот leave. I remember many years ago, decades ago, when this street is mainly car did not go, and walked the horse from the track and stables, and the old arena. And that's the feeling of this light, which is so blissful, it is there, from childhood".

But it's not just nostalgia for the outgoing city — is a real collective memory, multivalued and mnohosmyslov, philosophizing. Brainin looking for not just the output of his own memories, he conducts a dialogue not only with themselves, but with time, trying to convey both sadness and regret the lost...

I would like to say about the art of painting V. Brainin. A true pleasure to behold the manner of his writing — is free, bold, uninhibited. To see how vibrate the color shades, as glows the surface of the canvas, what color richness gives us the artist from dark to bright chords, how he works with color, light, selected work, through which the sun, they have air environment.

a Talented artist, intelligent and interesting people V. Brainin the language of painting speaks about the secret, he continues to work, and the level of tasks that it solves and solves, are impressive for their seriousness and relevance.

"I write people, the city, what-то, I want it all did not die. Maybe that's why I focus on the moments of destruction, the effects of time — the paradox is that in my paintings continues to live. And always important for me that I did, because I spent part of the soul..."

In 2000-х under the curatorship of art critic George Nikich held solo exhibitions Brainin hall "New Manege" (Moscow, 2002, 2006 "Dialogue with myself") and solo exhibition "painting" in the Art Museum. Radishchev (Saratov, 2000).

Works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov gallery (Moscow), State Russian Museum (Saint-Петербург), the Museum of ART4 (Moscow), the Ekaterinburg Museum of fine arts (Ekaterinburg, Russia), Kaliningrad Museum of fine arts (Kaliningrad), the fine arts Museum of Kuzbass (Kemerovo), Kurgan regional art Museum (mound), Nizhny Tagil Museum of fine arts (Nizhny Tagil), the Tula regional art Museum (Tula), the Yaroslavl art Museum (Yaroslavl), the Nikolaev regional art Museum of V. V. Vereshchagin (Nikolaev, Ukraine), Kherson artistic Museum. A.A. Shovkunenko (Kherson, Ukraine), Ludwig Museum (Cologne, Germany), National gallery of art "Zacheta" (Warsaw, Poland).

Alexei Smirnov, for AI