(E-E) Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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(E-E) Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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home // E-E // biographie // art // eros // Leningrad 80s // Valentin Kozlov // 2 x 3m // events // sitemap // kontakt /
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(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: Exhibitions >>
| (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov's Participation in the Second TEII Exhibition (1983) in His Diary and Photographs  Text: Hannelore Fobo, 2021 Chapter 6: Paintings: landscapes from the Russian Period (1981) previous page: Chapter 5: The Peterhof Book of Hours and The Homilies of Gregory next page: Chapter 7: Paintings: WASP (1983) Table of contents: see bottom of page >> |
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Chapter 6: Paintings: landscapes from the Russian Period (1981)
The process of selecting the paintings for the Second TEII Exhibition turned out to be much more complicated. Three paintings are documented with exhibition views. They fall into two categories. Two landscape paintings from 1981, ‘The Square Near the Railway Station’ and ‘Red Pond’ belong to what E-E Kozlov later defined as his ‘Russian’ period. ‘WASP’ from 1983 belongs to Kozlov's new style which, by all accounts, started with the painting ‘Tuaregs’ (Noli Me Tangere) in 1982. A third category also plays a role. It consists of those two paintings, ‘House’ and ‘Double Painting’, which were initially included and then removed from the exhibition. Each of these categories will be presented separately.
Landscape paintings
The landscape paintings with Peterhof motifs belong to a rather short period in Evgenij Kozlov's body of works, the so-called ‘Russian’ period (1980-1981), which starts with gouaches on paper. Works from 1980 display colourful, sculptural images of people set in the urban landscape of Saint Petersburg, as if composed with pieces from a wooden building blocks set. On p. 1-48 from Diary I, dated 21 April 1980, the artist explains his position: ‘Я хочу видеть жизнь вокруг себя яркой, красочной, похожей на детскую игрушку. Такой я ее и рисую. / I want to see life around me bright, colourful, like a children's toy. That's how I paint it. more >> Colours are often applied evenly and almost without shades, standing in strong contrast to each other. In ‘Sunday in Petrograd’ they are green and red, black and white, light blue and pink. This gives the compositions a naïve and playful folkloric touch. In Kozlov's seminal work from 1980, ‘This Century's Dead Affections, Up Until ...’, illustrating the relation between America and the Soviet Union, we recognise Kasimir Malevich’s interpretation of Russian folk art through suprematism (Haymaking, 1929) and Vladimir Lebedev’s famous ROSTA windows placards from 1917-1922 more >>. As a matter of fact, many protagonists of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde used such features.
In contrast to the monchrome shapes of ‘Sunday in Petrodgrad’, Kozlov used different degrees of colour saturation in an untitled illustration for Andrei Bely's novel 'Petersburg' (1980). Dark lines accentuate the transitions from darker to brighter tones, creating a play of light reminiscent of that in fluted columns. This effect can be noted in the blue body of the figure to the left – the angel's soul – and it is particularly strong in the red coat of the figure to the right. Large strokes of gouache, applied in a painterly fashion, create an illusion of perfectly rounded figures. The red coat, an allusion to Kozlov's own coat, actually displays shallow grooves runnig vertically, giving it a sculptural look. Different degrees of saturation also exist in ‘This Century's Dead Affections, Up Until ...’, but the transitions are very gradual and might not be noticed at first sight.
In a series of gouaches from 1981 with – mostly – figurative compositions, the artist developed this painterly style further to abstract, softly rounded geometric forms defined by coloured shadows.
The same year, the artist transferred this ‘soft’ geometric style to his oil paintings. Using oil – for the first time, so it seems – the transition between colours becomes rawer, and the texture, in places, pastose, which confers this technique a new sensual touch.
Again, most of these paintings are figurative, but there are some landscape paintings, too. To be exact, they are not landscapes in the proper sense of the word, since they present views of Peterhof and Saint Petersburg. Yet, unlike in the two gouaches from above, ‘Sunday in Petrodgrad’ and the illustration for Andrei Bely's novel 'Petersburg', the buildings in these paintings look like a natural part of their surroundings. Put differently, they look as if they had been grown by nature, not built by engineers or architects. Therefore, when referring to these paintings, the term ‘urban landscape’ looks out of place, and I will continue calling them simply ‘landscapes’ These landscape paintings include four ‘white’ paintings shown at the Letopis exhibition in February 1981 more >>. Because of their minimalism, unusual in Kozlov's art at that time, these four paintings can be considered as a specific subseries. Evgenij Kozlov returned to such minimalistic ‘white’ subjects only twenty years later see Diary II >>, notes to p. 2-55.
Below are two landsacpe paintings with Saint Petersburg motifs. The elongated, rounded shape of the trees is a typical feature of Kozlov's 1981 style.
The two Peterhof landscape paintings displayed at the Second TEII Exhibition are bright, almost surreal compositions, an impression enhanced by a new, mushroom-shaped variant of a tree. But there are other ‘strange’ elements, as well. In the painting ‘Red Pod’, there is a long, thin, spiraling cloud, which looks like a Solomic column put horizontally. It dominates the upper half of the compostion, forming a counterpoint to the red pond – which is acutally blue. If it wasn't for the title, there would hardly be any reference to Peterhof, and the same goes for the other painting, ’The Square near the Station’. These two works are most unusual, and this might explain while the artist decided to show them.
Research / text / layout: Hannelore Fobo, June / July 2021 Uploaded 18 July 2021
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