PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS BY VLADIMIR TEPLUKHIN

T H E M Y S T E R I U M OF A I R S C A P E S

1957 - 2001

THE HISTORY OF RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

Russian avant-garde represents an influential part of the modernist art movement of 1900-1930 in Russia. Its first, classic wave flourished in the 1914-1922.Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov, Mikhail Matyushin, Vladimir Tatlin, Pavel Kuznetsov, Georgy Yakulov, Alexandra Exter, Boris Ender and others.

The major art movements within the Russian avant-garde are:

Abstractionism Suprematism Constructivism Rayonism Cubo-Futurizm

(the first wave 1900–1930) (1913–1919) (1912–1921) (1911–1914) (1909–1915) (cubism, futurism)

Wassily KandinskyKazimir Malevich Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov PopovaMikhail LarionovVladimir Mayakovsky, Velemir Khlebnikov

Second Wave of the Russian Avant-Garde began in Moscow at 1957 year.

There were following Art-groups and their representatives in this years: The Official Art Pavel Nikonov, Nikolai Andronov, Igor Popov The Leftist Art (the second wave of Russian avant-garde; 1957-1987)Dmitri Plavinsky, Mikhail Schwartzman, Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov as well as 31 other artists and their pupils.Schwartzman’s School:Vladimir Teplukhin is one of Mikhail Schwartzman’s greatest students, the brightest representative of the Second wave of Russian avant-garde.The Left MOSKh (Moscow Union of Artists)” or the New Socialist Realism was a style of realistic art developed in the Soviet Union. Nikolai Andronov, Boris Birger, Leonid Berlin, Vladimir Weisberg, Natalia Egorshina.The Soviet Nonconformist Art (1953–1986, from the death of Joseph Stalin until Perestroika and Glasnost), Lianozovo Art Group established by Oscar Rabin, Ely Bielutin Group, Oleg Vassiliev.

THE SECOND WAVE OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE: THE ORIGINS

International exhibition in August-September 1957 The All-Union Exhibition of Young Soviet Artists at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students on the 30th of July reflected the current trends in Western art. Accordingly, Soviet artists chose various approaches towards a new emerging art environment.

However certain artists didn't follow the beaten path, preferring to find their own unique artistic voice and expression.

By 1960 the Moscow Leftist art movement was firmly established.

Reporters and art experts in the West noticed this free-spirited and unconstrained art form emerging within the stagnant pool of official Soviet art. The Western press variously described it as underground, unofficial and nonconformist, however these labels did not reflect the true essence of the art itself.

In 1971 Mikhail Grobman introduced the term "Second Wave of the Russian Avant-garde" instead the so-called Leftists

The Second Wave of the Russian Avant-garde:Arts experts in the West acknowledged the Second Russian Avant-garde early enough in a number of articles and publications. These artists bravely exhibited their works in their studios and workshops, as renegades, rejecting the socialist pseudo-aesthetics of the Soviet art establishment. They feared neither God, nor devil, nor the secret police, and thus the second wave of Russian Avant-garde began in earnest. From 1964 several prominent artists abandoned official career path out and joined an integral part of the Second Avant-Garde movement: Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Mikhail Schwartzman. Vladimir Teplukhin, a talented disciple of Ely Bielutin and Mikhail Schwartzman, became one of the brightest representatives of the Second Avant-garde movement. At the time a year in life amounted to an era, establishing a unique world, distinct and separate from the gloom of the Soviet existence. Today we proudly present Teplukhin’s masterpieces, celebrating the original vision and creativity of the Second Wave of Russian Avant-Garde.

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EXHIBITIONS

Bauer & Popov Gallery (Germany).

Private collections in Russia, the USA, Belgium and Spain.

1989 Moscow Youth Palace (MDM) The Logic of Paradox

May 24 – July 02, 2012. The Russian Museum, The Stroganov Palace Mikhail Schwartzman and His Disciples.

August 03 – 19, 2012: The National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) jointly with the Russian Museum, the Ludwig Collection, and the Schwartzman Art Foundation. Mikhail Schwartzman: Master, School, Students.

September 4, 2012: NCCA, Round table. Mikhail Schwartzman: Master, School, Pupils.

PUBLICATIONS

May 24 – July 02, 2012: The Russian State Museum, Сatalogue (Almanac, 326 issue) ISBN: 978-5-93332-401-0 The Russian State Museum: Mikhail Shvartsman and his disciples.

2014 Catalogue of the Third Russian Avant-Garde,The Zverev Center of Contemporary Art

Expert Opinion

ELIZAVETA PLAVINSKY

Vladimir Teplukhin's creative genius, first manifested in the late 1960s, stretches to the dawn of the new millennium. He became an artist very early or, rather, he was born to his art and was thus destined to be simultaneously extremely mature and infinitely childlike. His work is impossible to ascribe to any particular generation… His ardent desire to experiment was exceptional and is frequently mentioned in the memoirs of various artists describing the art scene of the 1960-70s.

Teplukhin died alone, in his workshop, surrounded by the multitude of his works. However, the life was kind to him – not long before his death he met his estranged daughter. The late Sergey Kuskov, a notable Russian art critic, undertook a detailed study of Teplukhin’s vast creative heritage. Mikhail Garutin, a friend of the artist, rescued his works, and Vladimir Teplukhin's art remains with us, saved by his family and his old friend.

The canvases in Teplukhin’s collection are abstract creations employing a number of complex and highly unusual techniques…The artist created a number of graphic sheets using the method of coating and washing off multiple layers of water-soluble paints so that the luminescence and transparency of the material makes the image and colour work jointly on both sides of the sheet, surpassing the two-dimensional space and transcending the obviousness of the medium.

− art critic, art historian, curator of contemporary art exhibitions, artist.

“These searches…always lead to simplicity and light, rather than the opposite.”

“He plunges down an abyss, as if intentionally getting into the darkest pit, but always looks for a way out, establishing the unconditionally bright and sound foundation of his work.”

Expert Opinion

SERGEY KUSKOV

− art curator and critic.

From Sergei Kuskov’s article The Symbol and The Script: Alternative Spaces of Vladimir Teplukhin

"Vladimir Teplukhin created himself and his own fiercely independent and distinct voice. He famously adhered to “rebellious leftism” in everything and stated his desire to move “against the current” even within his chosen circle of close acquaintances. He found his aesthetic inspiration through an intense spiritual quest.

His art does not focus on a particular image, does not ascribe a dominant, suggestive role to any symbol, his geometric form bears no traditional symbolical values, however his works are imbued with a certain spiritual and aesthetic alliance. “The Lines of Power” represent the symbolic beginning, the pathways and hidden codes of the thought itself, the thought process in action, inseparable from an emotional state, as if beyond the conscious and the unconscious, and its visual reflection in art.

Expert Opinion

THE ARTIST’S SCRIPT (BY S.KUSKOV)

Teplukhin’s mixed technique is particularly revealing: layers of paint applied on wet paper by dry stiff brushes. Transparent washes and multiple layers indicate hidden metaphysics of style, requiring immediate involvement and participation of the viewer, uncovering hidden transparency and shimmering resonance.

Each layer remains present even when removed, adding to the fabric of the painting.

It almost looks like the work creates itself; the absence of artist’s intent becomes yet another feature of the canvas.

Teplukhin’s “Adventure of Spirit” represents an altogether different approach to space, a daring incursion into the Unknown. There is a dynamic, asymmetric and mobile layered fluidity in Teplukhin’s art, an unexpected leap into the deep and an equally expressive return to the viewer. The artist himself explained that one should strive to view the world as if the Good and the Evil were undivided and accept both with equal love and understanding.

«The artist himself explained that one should strive to view the world as if the Good and the Evil were undivided and accept both with equal love and understanding.»

Biography

13 July 1957Vladimir Teplukhin is born in Moscow: "I started in painting while still in the womb… My pregnant mother suddenly began to paint landscapes and still-lifes after the French Impressionists."

The Drawing Studio at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts“...Bold and beautiful, sensual, emotionally charged emotive painting due to brilliant knowledge of the history of Modern Art from the French classics to the abstract paintings, where Kandinsky's art was especially attractive..." (S. Kuskov)

The Serov Art School, Moscow (under tutelage of Valery Geraskevich)

Ely Bielutin’s Studio. Independent studies"…Characteristic bloated abstracts and bright colourful masses explode on the canvas as if to break through the surface and escape the frame itself."

Meeting with Mikhail Schwartzman

Schwartzman’s Hieratic School of Art; developing and mastering a style of his own.

19 February 2001Vladimir Teplukhin died

1960s 1971 - 1974

1970s 1981 1988 - 1991

2001

“A leap into the invisible reality"

"A rush in the invisible reality". A fateful meeting after experiments were conceived and really was the meeting with Mikhail Shvartsman.Teplukhin’s apprenticeship at Schwartzman’s School was a choice that is if not quite Mature, than a choice of a very experienced but young artist of another generation.Not exactly a choice ("Freedom - is when there is no choice" - M.Shvartsman) it’s a logical-intuitive conclusion from the previous formation and deep aspirations. Prevailed was a ritual-ceremonical gradualness of performing process.

"... it’s a delight awareness of Life evolution, a process of the genesis that paradoxically attract toreasons, to the top of Entity."

V. Teplukhin

"The realities of the universal cause significant sense of contact with ancient and new at the same time, happiness awareness of Prime Cause"

V. Teplukhin

ARTIST AND MYSTIC

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