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 – “symchromism” -“neocezannism” – in abstract, realistic and “mixed” methods of the “color-composition” painting; finding new and new color plasticity forms and painting styles as well as new colorful gammas

“Art Council” magazine published three of my articles (in Russian) / caution: neither yahoo nor google translators are of any use to translate them/:
– “On the road to the «color composition»” (2006) –
about the “symchromy” aesthetics, “spiritual plasticity of color correlations”, “super local color sensation”;
– “Landscape study as an independent genre” (2007) –
about the palette-knife painting technique;
– "Landscape and abstract painting – interaction" (#4/74/2010) –
about some stages and links in realistic and abstract perception;
– continuation of the article "Landscape and abstract painting – interaction" (#6/76/2010) –
about the priority of the “color-plasticity approach” before the “decorative-view” one.

“Ideas govern the world” – and artists should always say: ideas govern the Art too. Thus one of my mottos (borrowed from Severin Boecie) says: “It’s much more important to know what you do than to do what you know”. While I live let me tell you something about my art – by myself. As we know color is the lord of painting, because its correlations contain the inner, spiritual plasticity which talks eloquently the colorful language of feelings, attitudes and even ideas, just formally changing its presence in realistic and abstract images. So, here and there, if it is painting, it should be like “color absolutism”.
Listening to the “absolute” sound of musical symphonies, – I compare it with “symchromies” in painting. “Symchromies” are deeper than decorative art, that’s why I seek for complicated harmonies of derived color multitudes – in abstract and realistic canvases of my "color-composition painting". Figurative images and views are rather easily remembered and somehow we become used to them; contrary to that, profound and rich "symchromy", with its color spiritual plasticity and dramaturgy of color-forms – “color absolutism”, makes abstract as well as realistic pictures “endlessly fascinating”, always touching us by its color melodies - as it ought to be in real painting.

IS IT A MATTER OF CHOICE OR JUST MY CHARACTER?

Being a passionate painter, my character persistently moves me to find landscapes with new and rather complicated “colour compositions” containing some “plasticity ideas” – which in fact are synonyms of Poetry! In that way constructivism of my painting method gradually develops, leading me spontaneously to abstraction and to a kind of “mixed”, abstract-realistic landscape style, using “colour-plasticity approach” with the whole variety of constructive color-forms, prompted and inspirited by Nature, and this is instead of “decorative-view approach”.

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 colors, encourages me to follow it and try to compose quit original color harmonies in their “spiritual, inner plasticity of color correlations” with wonderful combinations and dramaturgy of new color-forms – without imitating any objects. It gives human heart to our abstract art.

SYMPHONISM & "SYMCHROMISM" – ARE THERE ANY REAL LINKS?

Looking at some abstract canvases, profound and cultivated in their composition and colors, I compare them with beautiful musical symphonies, because my perception of such pictures seems to be like "visual listening". Indeed, music and color are very near in their human plasticity nature. Therefore, if we develop and complicate color 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 MOST “CLASSICAL EVOLUTION”: INTO XXI CENTURY AGAIN WITH CEZANNE

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

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

Born Nov. 21, 1944 in Monino – a tiny air academy city, situated in the woods near Moscow not far from two small rivers: the Klyazma and the Vorya – where it was so nice to get by bicycles .
Primary art education I received on the hands of my father, N.F. Kudryavtsev (1894-1989) – a scholar and inventor in the aironavigation, passionate hunter, who also practiced painting (his sketches from the World War I and humorous drawings on the Civil War aviation are available at: www.symchromism.com/fam01/index_1.php ).
• 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 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 famous Russian painters – Aleksandr Labas and Tatiana Yablonskaya, and since 1975 painted at Artists’ House in Sednev on the river Snov, Ukraine.
• Generally my art involvement began during the school years – then I was fascinated by poetry and drawing. So that on graduating the secondary school in 1963 (in Monino – a tiny academic city near Moscow where I was born, 1944) I had dozen of poems and one personal exhibition of drawings. That small exhibition exposed a kind of plasticity style 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 from our mother and father. 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, color 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 Young artists’ Association of the Moscow Union of 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”; 2006 – Moscow House of Nationalities, – “White Christmas”; and the very last exhibition took place in March 2009 during “Moscow International Art Salon” at the Central House of Artists, where I presented my landscape project “The Pure Rivers Of My Childhood”
(at that time I added to my father’s surname the surname of my mother – Dobrohotov, who so much encouraged me to pursue with the Art, and for “the Internet purpose” as well);
some of my pictures are in the private collections: like presents, – in Algeria, Bulgaria, Czech, Latvia, Russia, Syria and USA; purchased, – Ukraine and Germany.

SOMETHING TO CREATE, YET… SOMETHING TO REJECT

Now, after 45 years of permanent study and painting, my aesthetic credo sounds like this: complicated harmonies of derived color multitudes – “symchromism” -“neocezannism” – in abstract, realistic and “mixed” methods of the “color-composition” painting; finding new and new color plasticity forms and painting styles as well as new colorful gammas.

At the same time it rejects: monochromatic harmonies, subdivided pallets, backgrounds and dominant color fragments, decorative and well-known color combinations, open colors, and all kinds of formal and color recurrences, – because those contradict vivid and definite "color compositions", dramaturgy and original interaction of individual color-forms, reducing energy and beauty that come from the “spiritual plasticity of color correlations”.

The aesthetic nature of, as I say, the "super-local sense of color", which is one of the spiritual, plasticity human qualities, helps me to create the "inner" plasticity of color correlations, modulations and harmony of various color-forms - in the realistic, abstract and "mixed" painting of my "symchromy" approach, – I also call it: "the color absolutism in its constructive form".

TO FEEL AND THINK WITH COLOUR

The Nature will for ever remain the greatest source for all kinds of Art, especially for the painting, and for the "symchromy" – because it teaches us always new, divine, various and complicated color harmonies, fascinating plasticity and original constructive designs.
And even more than this: the landscape painting, due to its subtle color perception, highly inspired by Nature and “open air great energy”, rewards an artist with a quite wonderful “inverted ability” – for the direct abstract expression by colors of his feelings, aesthetic ideas, spiritual and intellectual attitudes, and that, particularly, gives the abstract and realistic "symchromism" its most beautiful, interesting and deep content.

© Kudryavtsev-Dobrohotov Yuri, 2011

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. Full Moon. (1999, canvas, oil, 100х75)
26. Carmen Dance. (1998, canvas, oil, 85х74)
27. Rugged Country. (1998, canvas, oil, 98х90)
28. Cows' Paths. (1999, canvas, oil, 112х95)

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