G.Ustyugov - "St. Andrew's Cathedral in the winter"
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Gennady Ustyugov, St. Andrew's Cathedral in winter, 1987, 49 x 35 cm, canvas /oil
Ustyugov Gennady Afanasevich (b. 1937, Tokmak, Frunze region., Kirghiz SSR). His father - a carpenter, his mother - a seamstress. After the war, the family moved to the Leningrad Region. Four years lived in the village of Hakama Vyborg district, then in the village Novosaratovka Vsevolozhsk district, which went down in the early 1970s. in the line of Leningrad. In 1953-1956. studied at SKHSH, where he was expelled for hobby impressionists. Some time engaged in the art studio of the Palace of Culture. Lenin. He worked as a mechanic, welder, painter, a loader, a laborer. Then received a disability pension due to mental illness.
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Keep a small number of works Ustyugova late 1950 - early 1960. Then the gap until 1970.: He once burned his picture in a fit of frenzy. Already in his early works appear cross-cutting themes: female image - it can be described as "Beautiful Lady", and the music - the image of a man with a musical instrument. Ladies dressed in vintage dress and superficially the images associated with miriskustnicheskoy tradition. But it is not and costumes for passeizm in the spirit of the century. The ladies - no one nowhere. Vintage dress does not put them in the past, it only reveals their otherworldly, their separation from the ordinary. They rather ugly body and still perfect: in its complete detachment, in its purified spirituality. They are soft, sad, focused, self-absorbed, in contemplation, in languor, and are perceived as the embodiment of the inner state of the artist. And if - as a dream, the dream of his female twin. Achieved a sense of spirituality subtle lilting circuit bending, emphasized physical thinning. But so far they have let the battered, but tangible flesh and pictorial texture more dense, viscous. In the 1970-ies. enhanced sense of disembodiment thinning the very flesh of painting, as well as a complete failure of the anatomical correctness of certainty, "portrait" of a person. Washed out, faded like a smoky, like a melting painting, liquid transparent strokes delicate shades, often surrounded by gray - all this creates a sense of dreams, which are shipped to the ladies. Can serve as a backdrop misty sky, repeated in the lush misty flounce dress. At this time his work somewhat reminiscent of paintings Blue Rose, especially early P. Kuznetsov - the similarity of funds due to the similarity of the problem. This is not a pastiche, no allusion. In images of refined ladies and vague distances, in a set of romantic clichés: flowers in her hair, a flower, a fan, apple necklace unnatural inverted, deliberately skinny arms, a dish of fruit on her head (the girl, dressed in a low-necked dress Europe) - no theatrics, no irony, no games, no hint of anything. It sounded tremulous "voice of a single person," directness hurt last confession, balanced subtle consonance of colors, the classical nature of construction, relaxed quiet character feelings, their timid, gentle rapture, enlightened spirituality of his sensuality. There is in these images oddity with all bloodless, they are seen alive. Ustyugov shows only that led into his inner world, his emotions move into the object, and then things seem to animate, and the animals - endowed with human feelings. This gives an unexpected quality of use of known motifs and techniques. Designed to discourage acceptance of metaphysical painting, where the place of man is a sculpture or a tailor mannequin with Ustyugova upside still lives in his country, where a bust of the table shows how the head of live girls. This is logical in his system, which played no flesh and dead material, but the living spirit.
By the end of 1970. there is another character who embodies his mental attitude: a hermit, standing in a boat, or a wanderer, moving in an endless desert. Another innovation: there are songs where the background to the figures or still life is a wall in the room - a wall with a window that can be taken for the picture - it has no binding and contains a dream, a dream of dreams (the sea with white sail boat, dense stylized cluster of houses with a towering dome above them.)
In the 1980-s. in representational system Ustyugova changes begin to occur, which gradually accumulate and give the end of the 1980's - early 1990's. new quality of his paintings. Attentive, receptive audience, Ustyugov absorbed that neoekspressionizm and neo-primitivism, which swept the exhibition of unofficial art of the second half of the 1980s., And created on this basis their system. Popular techniques he cleared of brutality brought to harmony and make the means of lyrical expression. In Ustyugova minimalism "new wild" was the savings associated with the maximum use of the expressive possibilities of each medium, every touch a brush. Stinginess subject number was always characterized him: for the still life he lacked one thing, for the image of the village - one house. Now the economy moves to the formal structure of the whole. Painting is like translated into paint graphic sketch, where the main role is played by a contour line. Ustyugov finds a lot of moves to diversify the means of expression - line, color, composition, and especially the white space, shall be as the shaking hand "awkward", "clumsy figure," which is balanced in Ustyugova classicality construction, precision and clarity of relationships and locations of all the elements picture. Change the color, quality and function: in addition to the emotional symbolism it is clear readability of the composition. White figure (open canvas) on the background of red and yellow walls of sex ("Which man chair to sit down?", The mid-1990s). Red-and-white figure on a black grand piano ("Meditation", 1994). Red-and-white figure, linked with a black square ("Close Window", 1996). Transparent figure - through her translucent background - with a huge range of red sun. Instead of faded, muted palette of the 1970s and the first half of 1980. there are large areas, entirely covered with bright or black, or white. It combines the areas shaded sharp color with unloaded, almost touched the canvas with paint. However, the intensity of the shaded areas relative: neploten layer of paint, canvas shines here: peace Ustyugova bright, sparse and weightless. Sometimes only intense color contour shapes. Space background is usually divided horizon - more curved than straight, sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes carried out exactly in the middle. In addition to the figures in the clear and boundless emptiness of the world there are a few things: parallelepipeds apartment buildings - as a symbol of reality, musical instruments - as a symbol of beauty, boat - as a symbol of romance. And birds - like creatures with wings and near the sky.
The female figure is the main element of the image. Now it is not written, but is indicated with a thick black or colored outline. It is planar, completely lost flesh and even a hint of concreteness. More stylized and generalized, acquired a distinct landmark. It is in most cases an elongated silhouette in a flowing dress to the ground with his head bowed and bowed humbly and sadly pitched. She almost lost her femininity, and simply means a human being. Or losing, and the latest omen femininity - schematic circles breasts - and finding the wings, means angel, and without wings - Christ. It recognized "icon Suprematism" Leningrad avant-garde. In the picture, this figure - no object of feeling, and its subject, the one who feels it. Depicting the seasons, Ustyugov do without their will in nature: it reproduces the spring or autumn mood alone pose shape, color combinations and character strokes. Figure he usually has one, and if more than one, they echo each other: the picture Ustyugova - space one emotion, it is what happens to a man, and not between people. Sometimes explicitly allegorical figure: "Crying at the behest of Russia" (1995) and "Son of Russia" (1990).
At the same time, in the 1990s. Ustyugov a series of works of another kind: half-figures in the front, in hats. In these somewhat reminiscent matissovskie, works the artist never stops scenic effects that it can draw from the same circuit image. But such formal decorative work is an exception in the general of his later works, the content of which is comparable with a poetic phrase. Poetic idea certify title-comment to the picture like the inscriptions in Japanese and Chinese painting, "lattices, at every turn, why do we," "I hear, autumn comes," "Where Do We Go", "Where will."
Painting Ustyugova - quiet but powerful energy - has the emotional penetration related to its extreme openness, sincerity and organically, the ability to give a clear image of what has guises. Detachment from the particular, a focus on the very existence, of being poetic voproshenie makes perceive his work as a philosophical, even though the world of abstract, book concepts foreign to him no less than the world of the practical. His detachment from reality in its everyday sense of the reality of relations, complex cause and effect is not something specifically for the art work out, this is not a position, but a fact of life. Ustyugov really divorced from reality, is not suited to it, he does not understand and does not interest her. At the same time the object of his feelings is still a reality - one that remains outside of the practical and the person of the "normal" only skirts the routine: the sky, the light on it, the birds, the seasons, the total obscurity of the world, freedom and captivity, their own smallness and vastness of the universe, not knowing the beginning and the end. This edge of the ordinary and at the same time the core of being Ustyugov constantly feels and it gave them work, making them for all their unreality transparently clear. And the fact that life is given by the extreme simplicity, innocence, passing through the temptations art form that takes the value of the evidence and depth of philosophical parable.
Gurevich. Leningrad underground artists: Biographical Dictionary. St. Petersburg, Art, St. Petersburg, 2007.
15.01.2013, 11:46
G.Ustyugov - "St. Andrew's Cathedral in the winter"
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