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Nikolai Pyatakhin. 50 years of creativity. Drawing, painting

Exhibition January 24 − February 5, 2023
Nikolai Pyatakhin belongs to a generation of painters whose development as an artist took place in the 1970s. He is now well known as a master, distinguished by his "uncommon expression of face". Having undergone a good professional training in the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, he nevertheless insistently sought to avoid academic dogma for the sake of acquiring his own method.

His individual style was formed with the help of mastering the language of art of such masters as P. Cezanne, A. Derain, P. Picasso, which in those days, however strange it may seem to us now, neither in educational institutions, nor in official art structures. After his service in the Red Army in 1972, where he drew his fellow soldiers "Soldier Komarov", he painted still-lifes for 3-4 years on a different "non-school level": "Fishes" and "Rhubarb".

However, realizing the limitations of this painting system, Pyatakhin switched from alla prima technique to multilayer painting. This is evidence not so much of the technological aspect, but rather of the development of a fundamentally different way of thinking, and therefore, of working on the canvas. From now on, as the author himself explained, he could "not just transmit 'emotion at the drop of a hat,' but cognize the world in the process of painting, in a long, deep and gradual way.

By the 1980s, the painter's method of painting had fully formed, and now he entered into a creative dialogue not only with the masters of art nouveau, but also with the classics, including Titian, N. Poussin, A. Venetsianov and many others. The exhibition presents a small number of paintings of different years from 1972 to 2021. The main composition of the exposition is graphic art, for the first time at the personal exhibition of the artist it is exhibited in such a diverse way.

In his work you can clearly see the cycles of works that embody such themes as mother and child, fatherland and family, man in the natural and urban environment, the artist's workshop, drawing class at the Faculty of Architecture. They, these series of works were not conceived in advance, organically growing, intertwining and enriching each other with meanings, embody the worldview of their author. So in the unique graphics and lithographs, created by the artist over 40 years, you can find these images.

Graphic sheets sometimes precede a painting or are created as an independent work, and in both cases they are self-valuable. The viewer is given the opportunity to peek into the artist's studio himself, to understand, in part, the process of creating a work of art.
The exhibition can be seen from January 24 to February 5.
Entrance ticket: 150r.
Address: Center for Books and Graphics, Liteiny prospect, 55.
Galleries at the exhibition