| From November 20 till December 1, in the Borey Art Gallery there is an exhibition of one of the most important personages of Leningrad underground Valentin (Till Maria) Samarin. He is well-known as photographer, and it is his first exhibition of paintings only. Earlier, his paintings were exposed as a part of a photoshow to broaden the conception of Samarin’s creativity for the spectators. Now, there will be pictures painted since 1980-s till nowadays.Valentin Samarin was born in Leningrad in 1928. In 1944, in the evacuation, he finished secondary school through extern system and entered Physics-Mathematical Faculty of the Leningrad State University. The authorities noted him for the first time in 1956, after the organization of the Hyde-Park Performance on the Art Square in Leningrad for the discussion of Pablo Picasso exhibition in the Hermitage; it is not a question that he was immediately arrested. His arrest was short-termed, Samarin was released after two days, but then, he was regularly invited “for a talk”. When a recurrent talk was at a deadlock because of the difference of concepts and principle of the perception of art, Samarin was sent for a “medical cure” to a special prison mental hospital in the Arsenalnaya St., where he spent almost two years – 1960 and 1961. Because Till Maria was not of a meek temper, and his art was in need of propaganda not less than socialist realism — and may be even more (the context and terminology by Samarin was oriented to an attentive spectator more that a picture of “students harvesting potato”), his creative activity was under the rapt observation by the authorities. But it didn’t prevent Samarin from participation in the flat and other informal exhibitions, from organization of his own salon “974” where many shows took place as well as poetic and musical parties — from 1978 till 1980. In 1981, the patience of Soviet authorities came to an end, and Samarin was sent to emigration by force. He had no clear idea where did he go, and after wandering through Europe he settled in Paris. Strangely enough, but he didn’t come to Russia till the beginning of the new century, in spite of the changing political situation. Only in the latest 5-7 years his artistic works are known in his motherland, mainly thanks to the enthusiasm of the curator Valery Valran. Paintings by Samarin appeared earlier than his photos. The first pictures were made in the mental clinic in the Arsenalnaya St. From technical point of view, there were abstract expressionism — that very element where he felt himself right at home. It is his adequate space. The reason is in the mighty metaphysical batch on which all the Samarin’s creativity is growing, both photography and painting. Everything he makes is more or less connected with to concepts invented by him: white icon and sledge (sankI). According Samarin, white icon is a transpersonal philosophic and aesthetic concept for the realization of the uniqueness of each human being coming into this world. >From the point of a non-overburdened with contextual loading view, this concept is adequate enough to a theory of abstract expressionism in general, when an artist works not with material but it is material which leads an artist in advance providing him a way of expression his feelings and his experience on the surface of canvas, veneer or other base. The concept of sledge (sankI) is connected more with photography because in the same field of philosophic and aesthetic concepts it describes energetic state of matter, metaimage of a human being or an object, set by Samarin in his photos.The exhibition of paintings by Samarin in the Borey Art Gallery forestalls a great exhibition of Leningrad underground in the State Russian Museum; the aim is to present the image of the master in more full scale. |
