"Pure painting". Exhibition of works by Nikita Medvedev (1950-2018) and Tatiana Alekseeva

An exhibition of works by the Honored Artist of Russia, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Nikita Vsevolodovich Medvedev (1950-2018) and his wife Tatyana Nikolaevna Alekseeva "Pure Painting" is opening at the Russian Academy of Arts. The exposition presents paintings by a tandem of artists who have lived together for 46 years and have worked for almost 20 years in the same workshop, mutually enriching each other’s work.

The high artistic merit of the works of one of the leading masters of monumental painting, Nikita Medvedev, is generated by his keen interest in man and nature. In his works, professionalism is multiplied by the view of a philosopher and the ability to original interpretation of reality in artistic images. Freely navigating the labyrinths of art from the archaic to the 21st century, he sets the task of a purely personal comprehension and display of the world. Various tendencies were organically combined in Medvedev’s work - from passion for the art of Ancient Russia and the Early Renaissance to the French school of painting.

The static nature of his paintings is designed to personify the stability of being, spiritual aspiration to eternity, as opposed to the fragility of disbelief and vanity. Such are the works of his "monastic" cycle. Having survived centuries, "glory and pestilence", monasteries in these canvases appear as symbols of human memory passing from generation to generation. The architecture of Kirillo-Belozersky, Nikolsky, Danilov, Goritsky and Solovetsky monasteries is reproduced with exhaustive accuracy. All the paintings of the cycle are imbued with a special lyrical mood and convey to the viewer the special state of nature and emotions of the author.

An important chapter of the master’s work is portraiture. An artist of universal talent, he masterfully owns this genre. Medvedev’s portrait is not a close-up image of a face with all the nuances, but a picture in which the individual properties of a model are conveyed by the entire plastic of the compositional system.

Tatyana Alekseeva first turned to oil painting on canvas in 1995. All the paintings she has painted since then have been made in a single style and are filled with figurative symbols repeating from work to work. Fabulous images from the artist’s illustrations were transformed in her painting into a theatrical play of carnival masks. The characters in her paintings, dressed in extraordinary clothes with hats stylized for a particular era, intrigue the viewer, involving him in their mysterious world, ironically playing with him and preventing the solution of the hidden meaning. In a series of masks, abstract characters coexist with specific personalities, among which are the self-portraits of the artist herself.

Alekseeva’s painting is a space of total theater, joining Venice and Egypt, Spain and China, combining Shakespeare’s greatness with reflection and stylization of decadence in her poetics. The evolution of art by Tatyana Alekseeva delights with its logic and naturalness, explaining the phenomenon of the late and at first glance unexpected birth of painting, which from the very first steps acquired an absolute maturity of design and the refinement of plastic art.

Nikita Vsevolodovich Medvedev (1950-2018) was born in the city of Riga, Latvian SSR in 1950. The artist has always considered his first and main teacher to be his father, Vsevolod Medvedev, a famous Moscow graphic artist who worked in the field of book illustration. In 1973, N. Medvedev graduated from the Moscow Higher School of Industrial Art (formerly Stroganov). The artist perceived the feeling of the seriousness of the artist’s work, the attitude to art as a great work from the outstanding painter, full members of the USSR Academy of Arts, Geliy Korzhev, who headed the department of monumental painting at Stroganovka.

During his fruitful creative career, the artist took part in more than 300 exhibitions in Russia and abroad. The artist’s works are presented in the collections of the Yaroslavl Art Museum, Pereslavl-Zalessky Museum of Art and Local Lore, Ivanovo Art Museum, Arkhangelsk Art Museum, Tula Art Museum, Ryazan Art Museum named after I.P. Pozhalostin, Vologda Art Museum, in the collection of the Moscow Union of Artists, in collections of the Ministry of Culture of Russia, as well as in private collections in Russia, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Belgium, China.

Tatiana Nikolaevna Alekseeva was born in 1948 in the city of Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Graduated in 1971 from the Leningrad Higher School of Industrial Art. V. I. Mukhina (now - SPGKhPA named after A. L. Stieglitz), clothing modeling department. She worked in the field of book illustration, collaborated with the publishing houses "Children’s Literature", "Mysl", "Soviet Composer", having illustrated more than 20 books. Member of the Moscow Union of Artists. Tatyana Alekseeva has taken part in over 150 exhibitions in Russia and abroad. Her works are in private collections in Russia, France, Germany, Austria.