BORIS CHETKOV (Russian, b. 1926). Stepan Razin, 1971. Acrylic on canvas. 20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Artist monogra...

Description

BORIS CHETKOV (Russian, b. 1926)
Stepan Razin, 1971
Acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Artist monogram lower right in Cyrillic
Titled, numbered, signed, and dated verso in Cyrillic

PROVENANCE:
Pushkin Collection, acquired directly from the artist

LITERATURE:
Chetkov, the Portraitist, Pushkin Group, 2008

"This is a work of many layers, its painterly realization representing Chetkov's perpetual interest in one of the most interesting artistic phenomena of the 1920s, the school of Matyushin. Indeed, in this work, there arises a sense of movement of two color masses, in accordance with Matyushin's theory of additional color, facilitating the appearance of a third, linking color. This dense, viscous color environment creates an almost psychedelic sense of an engulfing color haze that seems to swallow one up. There is no depiction here at all, just a sense of color, accumulating living, natural sensations in all their dynamism, to create that sense of the organic, that "sign of a return to Nature" (Mikhail Matyushin). But in this case, this organic essence also has a biographical, subject connotation. Stepan Razin is one of the most popular or all Russian heroes in folk mythology, a man of Nature. He is the embodiment of elemental, natural protest (Soviet historiography sought to fit him into the scheme of Russia's revolutionary, anti-exploitation movement but it never took on and the people have always prized their hero for his spontaneity and unpredictable qualities.) Chetkov too, it seems to me, turns to the image of Razin with quite specific aims in mind, aims related to his sense of autobiography, of self-portrait. Disguised in this image of the elemental, natural, down-to-earth nonconformist, he seems to play out his life as an artist born of the people, an artist who suffered throughout his life from pressure from above."
Dr. Alexander Borovsky - Chetkov, the Portraitist

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