Aktis Gallery , London, March 8 - April 13, 2013
10 Park Place, London SW1AILP

Vladimir Yankilevsky Two on the beach. 1958 canvas. 75 x 107 Source: Press Release Aktis Gallery

Aktis Gallery in London March 8 presents "Vladimir Yankilevsky. Earlier works. 1957-1961 ". The exhibition will feature works that he never exhibited more than fifty years and showed no one (except a few things). It is not well-known, but nevertheless a very important period in the Vladimir Yankilevsky , from which rose and " Landscapes of power ", and" space experience ", and the concept of triptychs, identify all of its further development.

Vladimir Yankilevsky making sketches in Gudauta on the Black Sea. 1958 Source: Press Release Aktis Gallery

Vladimir Yankilevsky in his one-room apartment and studio in combination. 1958 Source: Press Release Aktis Gallery

This little said in an interview Vladimir Yankilevsky with David Riff in 2001, a fragment of which we publish:

David Rieff: In these earlier things have a very big breakthrough just on the stylistic level. That's a cycle, which is called "Landscape forces," he's a little reminiscent of some micro-organisms, if you try to describe it visually. Organic elements, a little bit of the network within a single organism, and very often, and also have a cell nucleus. And then there is a very different language, and "Theme and Improvisation" is a lot closer to what you just keep doing. This music gave this, I believe, the momentum?

Vladimir Yankilevsky : No, I do not seem. It was just a very big jump from the initial figurative period, my "blue period", as you call it, to abstract elements through the "bottle." Still Life with Bottles were just transition to abstract things 60s. No, there was a sharp jump in, there was just the evolution of self-identification with the language. In the phase when there were elements of this species, of which you now say, that were similar to the embryos, or cells, or in the kernel, and so on, it was as if the space in which swam the individual elements. Between them was what is called a primordial soup. There were three, four, two elements that can be put numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Between them there was water. Or the sky. This is about what I did Miro.

D. R. : Well, the atoms are.

B. J. : Yes. But in this, I felt a kind of literary, because these elements have become Vasya, Petya, bones and so on. I already began to worry, because I thought that all the world's space has other characteristics that are important, not the elements themselves, and the importance of interaction between them. And here's an attempt to implement this interaction and led me to the "themes and improvisation." Because here all the space already ravnonapolneno and it has so-called "centers of agitation" and among the important communication interactions that are more important, more power than the individual form elements. So everything was ravnonapolnennym, and it was difficult to say № 1, № 2, № 3 and № 4. In this interaction, these elements have lost their uniqueness. This has become a field of life, it started to move. And in this fundamental difference between things where were the "embryos". And it was no longer Miro. It was already quite different.