ABSTRACT PAINTING & LANDSCAPE.

REALISM PLUS CONSTRUCTIVISM.

"SYMCHROMY" PICTURES & NATURE STUDIES.

PAINTER: Yuri Kudryavtsev-Dobrohotov
COUNTRY/CITY: Russia, Moscow

THE AESTHETIC CREDO FOR THE 3rd MILLENIUM PAINTING:

complicated harmonies of derived colour multitudes - "symchromy" - in abstract, realistic and mixed methods of the "colour-composition" painting

(In Russian - you can also read the article: "On the road to a "colour composition"" - in the ART COUNSIL magazine, №6 /52/ 2006)

PAINTING EXPERIENCE & COLOUR PERCEPTION
(summary)

ABOUT MY ART

“Ideas govern the world” – and artists should always say: ideas govern the art too. While I live, let me speak a little about my art and myself. All of us know that colour is the lord of painting, because its correlations contain the inner, spiritual plasticity which eloquently speaks the colourful language of feelings, attitudes and even ideas, just formally changing its presence in realistic and abstract images. So, here and there it is like “colour absolutism”! When I listen to the absolute sound of symphonies – I compare it with “symchromies” in painting. Because they are deeper than decorative art and move me towards rather definite and complicated harmonies of derived colour multitudes – in abstract and realistic canvases of my "color-composition painting". Profound "symchromy" with its colour spiritual plasticity and dramaturgy of colour forms makes abstract as well as realistic pictures “endlessly fascinating”.

IS IT A MATTER OF CHOICE?

If painter’s character persistently moves him to find landscapes which contain new and rather complicated “colour compositions”, – the constructivism of his painting method will develop spontaneously and may lead him gradually to abstraction and to a kind of mixed, abstract-realistic landscape style with the whole variety of constructive colourful forms, prompted and inspirited by Nature.

WHERE A PAINTER COULD COMPETE WITH THE NATURE

I have come to the abstract improvisation especially due to my greatest passion for the landscape painting. The example of Nature creating so freely an infinite diversity of forms and colours, encourages me to follow it and try to compose original colour harmonies in their spiritual, inner plasticity with wonderful combinations of new colourful forms – without imitating any objects. Thus it gives most human heart to most abstract art.

SYMPHONISM & "SYMCHROMISM" – ARE THERE ORIGINAL LINKS?

Looking at some abstract canvases, profound and cultivated in their composition and colours, I compare them with beautiful symphonies, because my perception of such pictures seems to be like "visual listening". Indeed, music and colour are very near in their human plasticity nature. Therefore, if we develop and complicate colour harmony and composition of our abstract painting, making it definite and constructive, multiform and aesthetically organized, vivid, expressive and original, – it means that we create a kind of symphony, in painting I call it: "symchromy". This attitude equally relates to mixed, abstract-realistic as well as realistic painting.

THE “CLASSICAL EVOLUTION”: INTO XXI CENTURY AGAIN WITH CEZANNE

Side by side with the "symchromism" I have put a very high and universal criterion for my painting – "neocezannism", which I understand as necessary and divine combination of colour qualities: wealth and complexity, emotional intellectuality of colour vision, amazing spiritual plasticity and airy accuracy of colour correlations, – all these being the nature of Cezanne painting, which we can comprehend, looking at his pictures, as they are, in the museums and exhibitions. Plus, his great will for the artistic experiment, form and colour innovations. These criterions fill my “symchromism” painting aesthetics – abstract and realistic. I hope, they will always signify in the painting art, giving new examples of painting beauty (– and in spite of what we see now in the overwhelming “colour design culture” /"cdc"!/, which, because of its technical attributes, could never achieve the spiritual colour plasticity and harmony of the original painting).

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

• I date the beginning of my painting practice and study by the year of 1965 – in my 21. At that time I was a student, learning languages, diplomacy and other sciences in the Moscow Institute of International Relations. Soon, after working in Embassy in the Sudan (1967) and then in Syria, I preferred, since 1970, to teach Arabic language at the same Institute – in order to devote myself more to painting and drawing exercises. And I proceeded with that line in my short visits to Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait and even during my directorship of the Russian Cultural Center in Cairo (1993-95), where I built a kind of studio.
• But at the very beginning I took courses at Surikov Institute studios in Moscow (1973-74), then at Repin Academy studios and Mukhina Art Institute in St.-Petersburg (1976). Being a young artist, then I made a race of exhibition participations with getting diplomas, presentations and purchases here and abroad, and was admitted to the Young Painters’ Association of Moscow Art Union (1975). It was very interesting and useful period when I contacted with famous Russian painters – Aleksandr Labas and Tatiana Yablonskaya, and all those years painted at Artists’ House in Sednev on the river Snov, Ukraine.
• Generally my art involvement began during the school years – then I was fascinated with poetry and drawing. So that on graduating the secondary school (in Monino – a tiny academic city near Moscow where I was born, 1944) in 1963 I had dozen of poems and one personal exhibition of drawings. That exhibition exposed a kind of plasticity which first had appeared in my sketches done from the board of the “Anton Chekhov” steamer in 1960, when I rushed to draw the banks, churches and ships on the rivers Volga and Kama ( www.symchromism.com/graf/s3.php ).
I suppose that, as an artist, I’ve awaked on the board of that steamer, in my 16, traveling with my mother by the rivers Volga and Kama.
• The poetry of life attitudes, which makes us artists, is a thing which we inherit. Thus, I was surprised how near I could be to my father – both in the vision of life and in the drawing, when, after his death, I found two notebooks with about hundred of father’s sketches which he made at the front of the World War I in 1915-17, where he was taken to from the St.-Petersburg Polytechnic University ( www.symchromism.com/fam01/index_1.php ).
• So, I began to practise painting after a period of drawing, which I continued side by side with the painting. I am sure the drawing and life sketches enrich the painting with plasticity, movement and innovations.
• More than this: life sketches so much influence our painting and our vision as a whole, that I often associate it with Walt Whitman’s poetry.
• On the other hand, colour is as near to me as music. And I look at every new and compound color gamut and harmonious composition like at a mute symphony. Out of this, I call my painting method: “symchromy” or the “symchromism”.
• Since 1974 participated in exhibitions, organized by the Association of young artists. The latest exhibiting participations: 1994 – Cairo, Russian Cultural Centre, – “International Art Exhibition”; 1997 – Moscow, Central House Of Artists, – “Famous, Forgotten & New Names”; 2004 – Moscow, Tishinka Exhibition Centre, – “Lux Art Salon”; 2005 – Moscow, Central House Of Artists, “Moscow International Art Salon – 2005”; 2006 – Moscow House of Nationalities, – “White Christmas”; Mine pictures are also in the private collections in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, USA, Bulgaria, Czechia, Latvia, Algeria and Syria.

SOMETHING TO CREATE AND SOMETHING TO REJECT

The "symchromism"-"neocezannism", as I conceive it, is a method based on complicated harmonies of, as a rule, multitudes of derived colours, quite definite and constructive, with wide range of colour and formal, joint plasticity innovations.
It rejects: monochromatic harmonies, subdivided pallets, backgrounds and dominant colour fragments, decorative and well-known colour combinations, open colours, and all kinds of formal and colour recurrences, – because those contradict vivid and definite "colour compositions", dramaturgy and original interaction of individual colour forms, as well as spiritual plasticity of their colour correlations.
The aesthetic nature of, as I say, - the "super-local sense of colour" helps me to create spiritual, inner colour plasticity, modulations and harmony of various colour forms - in the realistic, abstract and "mixed" painting of my "symchromy" approach. I also call it: "the colour absolutism in its constructive form".

TO FEEL AND THINK WITH COLOUR

The Nature will always remain the greatest source for all kinds of arts, especially for the painting, and for the "symchromy", – teaching us new, divine, various and complicated colour harmonies, fascinating plasticity and original constructive designs. And more than this: the landscape painting, due to its highly inspired colour reception, and its open air energy, rewards an artist with a wonderful ability – for the direct abstract expression by colours of his feelings, aesthetic ideas, spiritual and intellectual attitudes, and that, exactly, gives the abstract and realistic "symchromism" its most beautiful and deep content.

© Kudryavtsev-Dobrohotov Yuri, 2002

1. Russian Landscape. ( 1989, oil, canvas, 125x95 )
2. Lawn In Lizogubs' Estate. Sednev - Ukraine. (1988, 79х57, o/c)
3. Autumn Forms. (1985, 76х72, o/c)
4. Red Angel (M. Gorbachev). (1989, 100х85, o/c)
5. Portrait Of Gifted Woman. (1990, 100х90, o/c)
6. At The Sunset. ( 1990, oil, canvas, 110x105 )
7. Portrait Of A Man / Self-Portrait. ( 1996, oil, canvas, 100x86 )
8. Evening Sun. Village. ( 1993, oil, canvas, 100x98 )
9. Overgrown Pond. ( 1996, oil, canvas, 112x94 )
10. Jumping Horse. ( 1996, oil, canvas, 123x77 )
11. Holy Trinity. Love, Hope And Faith. ( 1998, oil, canvas, 100x87)
12. Embrace. ( 1996, oil, canvas, 90x78 )
13. Woman And Man. Conception. ( 1997, oil, canvas, 111x86 )
14. Moscow Summer. ( 1998, oil, canvas, 110x110 )
15. Triumphant. ( 1997, oil, canvas, 119x89 )
16. The Edge Of Wood In The Evening. ( 1980, oil, canvas, 125x95 )
17. Corn Field. ( 1996, oil, canvas, 121x76 )
18. Low Clouds. ( 1997, oil, canvas, 100x75 )
19. Peace And Quiet. (1997, canvas, oil, 79х58)
20. Starry Sky. (2000, canvas, oil, 97x85)
21. Old Park Theme. (1997, canvas, oil, 100х91)
22. Morning Near The River. (2000, canvas, oil, 100х87)
23. Sylphid. (1996, canvas, oil, 120х90)
24. Pyramid's Spirit. (1994, canvas, oil, 110х110)
25. Putnik & Peter The Great. (1977)
26. Hot Russians' Soul & Self-Digging. (2002)
27. Full Moon Lady. (1999, canvas, oil, 100х75)
28. Carmen Dance. (1998, canvas, oil, 85х74)
29. Rugged Country. (1998, canvas, oil, 98х90)
30. Theme Of The Spirit. (2005)
31. Cows' Paths. (1999, canvas, oil, 112х95)
32. Weeds, Bushes & Trees At Sunset. (2006)
    

MY "SYMCHROMISM" & REALISTIC LANDSCAPE

LANDSCAPE STUDIES
Colour & form. Images & states of the Nature

ON THE WAY TO "COLOUR COMPOSITION"
Composition varieties & aesthetics of fragment

KARADAG VOLCANO LANDSCAPES (CRIMEA - 2004, 2006)

AND AGAIN UKRAINE - SEDNEV - CHERNIGOV REGION (2003-10)

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

E-mail: :kudrar@yandex.ru / galbyart@yahoo.com