"Graphic art exhibition of a well-known St Petersburg artist, writer and tutor is thematically connected and complements another event in Alexander Pavlovitch Zaitsev’s life, which is publication of his book “WXYZ. Literature. Graphics” in 2011. Due to this fact, within the exhibition opening there’ll be a meeting with the author and presentation of the book, which fully reflects creative work of a famous St Petersburg artist, a remarkable thinker and a man of letters, A.P.Zaitsev. The exposition consists of the master’s 33 graphics works; these are drawings made with cane stylus, tempera and mixed method works, lithography. Some of them will be exhibited for the first time. Part of the works to be shown in the small hall of Borey art gallery has been published as illustrations on “WXYZ” pages. “During the recent half a century there appeared several rather definitely manifested trends in fine art of our city. One of them, extremely important, influential and productively developing not only in St Petersburg, is connected with the name of A.P.Zaitsev. Indeed, Alexander Pavlovitch is not only a wonderful artist, but also a teacher and prophet and a distinctive thinker with an artistic outlook taken to heart, which he is generously sharing with his students and like-minded persons. The basis for his art is an idea of mathematical laws in artistic forming and building a composition... The artist, like a medieval alchemist in his aspiration for the impossible finds new ways, going deep into antiquity, foresees future, sees Thanatos behind Eros, bewitches a most ordinary object, plunges a man into great history, and takes square Russian upcountry people out to modern age... Alexander Pavlovitch Zaitsev’s work is undeniably important, as it defines a special branch of expressionism in combination with irresistible passions of subconscious and drive for divine harmony of numbers. It is especially vivid in his “Hermitage” series, in which analytical discoveries of old masters’ magnificent constructions are made by a tragic master of the 20th century”. Nikolay Blagodatov,
member of Art Criticism Section in Artists’ Union of Russia A.P.Zaitsev’s site: www.alexandrzaycev.com |
