Feb. 20 in St. Petersburg in the Engineers (Mikhailovsky) Castle (a branch of the Russian Museum) will be evening in memory of the artist Eugene Rukhin .

artist Eugene Rukhin died before reaching forty days before his tridtsatitrehletiya. It will take many years to fade away arguments about the perpetrators of his death, mourning and fortune-telling about how his life would have been and where he turned to art ... And it turns out that Eugene Rukhin as a true son of St. Petersburg continues the line of premature deaths, but had time to creatively express the essence of their time talent in Russia, without which one can imagine and understand the entire era ...

In the works Rukhin lined up a special system of signs, the end is not yet understood, but an intriguing introduction of the unexpected audience receptions and realities. This was new for the Russian audience pictorial language, but the language created in the same breath, was so shaped that, even for the uninitiated in the subtleties of contemporary art, he was heard in the works of young artist as a symphony of time. Modern songs Rukhin captivates with its subtext, and incited a wave of ownership and belonging to Here and Now ...

When one after another, through hundreds of slides of work Rukhin and begin better knowledge of the set up of the composite system, then you realize: in the works Rukhin there is nothing accidental in any choice of colors, either in gesture or in the smear. Pictures Rukhin epistolary in them - the message, of dedication, collages of the details surrounding his subjects. They bear the feeling of his time, the life of his generation and the artist's emotional response to the sequence of events - both personal and external ...

The system uniquely flat officialdom itself looks Rukhin (at head and shoulders above the adjacent, with curly hair, shot with gold in the sun a lion's mane of hair, transforming into a shaggy beard for a young person) has been a challenge, and at the same time, he attracted and had to win people to their inner aristocracy and care. Rukhin looked unusual, even among the precipitating out of the crowd fellow artists. After his death, all seemed to have a head taller.

visual language Rukhin included elements of pop art and abstraction. Coded reality artist lined up in the compositions of his paintings were ready and easy to read characters - from popular icons to flit before the eyes of inscriptions and stereotyped characters. This direct response viewer, recognition, and let not understood until the end of the context, a sense of the sacrament of communion, set down on the canvas, and empathy. Work Rukhin perceived as a social protest, and at the same time as the nostalgia for the past Russia. Rukhin was well acquainted with the cultural heritage of Russian avant-garde 1920's when artists broke with the old ways of expressing themselves, finding new forms, when, to keep up with new trends in the rapidly growing industry, the art of becoming technically sophisticated, and when Fernand Leger discovered a "mechanical age" in painting. At the same time attempts Wassily Kandinsky to create a pictorial composition, so as freely as the music itself, led to the birth of abstraction. Rukhin not try to "bring the viewer a feeling beyond the painting. On the contrary, with the help of associations Rukhin leads the viewer into a meditative state recognition in the context of social protest.

working in Leningrad in 1960-70's in parallel with the Moscow artists: Vladimir Nemukhin , whom he especially loved and revered, Lydia Masterkova , whose work was close to him, Oscar Rabin , who had a great influence on Rukhin and whose friendship helped him grow as an artist, Rukhin also had a clear idea of current trends in the art of the "free world". It is undertaken more correspondence with artists and gallery owners in the U.S. and find ways to redirect work for exhibitions outside the Soviet Union. In the relative vacuum of those years in Russia Rukhin could cause American artists to talk, to exchange ideas.

was still fresh in the memory of how precious things of the past have been destroyed, burned or simply dumped on garbage. Windows attics in the villages were killed icons of the XVIII century. Adaptation of abstract expressionism in Rukhin bears the influence of time, society and the audience. Rukhin developed a new method of transferring an imprint with folding metal icons on the surface of the canvas, creating reliefs. By entering into its composition such a significant element of the Russian world view, like an icon, Rukhin offers the viewer a starting point, and won him the attention and interest, objective perception translates to a higher level abstraction of the subject.

personal life Rukhin was a man-a mystery. He said: "Keep your secrets to yourself." He was taciturn, and, if something is uttered, the essence of it is fully opened at once. Wherever he was, Rukhin all the time sketching their future tracks and hurried to the studio to quickly begin once two or three of the canvas at the same time, including them in the series. He was hurrying to work, said that the day sorely lacking. Many considered a waste of time for which you can manage to "draw a picture. It seemed that he had obeyed a domestic, it is not subject to valid, existing by its own rules ...

have items in the compositions Rukhin own, our own history: they were used, tortured , smashed, thrown, trampled on, ruined, humiliated, blew up, like living next to them, and they narrate about the transience of our life, in which time itself does not exist. They have their own voice and its own will. Rukhin treated them as living beings. Even on the paint, he said: "If she wants to go so, so it should be." He could use the most unexpected details, creating dozens of options, not afraid of repetition. Details, which can be mentally recover his path along the Neva River, a narrow street, turning a deaf yard of the old Anglican Church. Details, which were kept in his memory, west from the outside - inside, fixed in a certain way. Rukhin himself became part of his story himself - a detail surrounding us and the world, even despite this world became at once everything and nothing. Strangely, in Rukhin mystical abstraction translates into pure, moreover, in the ancient Russian spirituality. Symbols of inclusion in the plot faces of saints in the imprints of icons, details of the church altar, things pre-revolutionary life is related to the history of Russia, the Orthodox Church. But the poetics of true artistic image is universal, its associations and become broader context. Rukhin considered himself a cosmopolitan, and his art political. But art in Russia has never been (and never will be) apolitical, because in Russia itself is apolitical - is already policy. Rukhin was killed, claiming himself a free man - a Russian artist. He believed that the time will come when his work as the work of other non-conformist artists will be exhibited at home. Sooner withdrawing from life, the artist Yevgeny Rukhin left behind a great musical legacy. Prophetically now reads an inscription made in his recent works: "I do not say goodbye» - Never Good-Bye.

Svetlana Darsalia, curator of exhibitions

Source: museum. ru