Dmitri Krasnopevtsev

Dmitri Krasnopevtsev: A Retrospective Exhibition, Jersey City, N.J.: C.A.S.E. Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, 1990
Aleksandr Ushakov, Dmitri Krasnopevstev. Kniga Tretiya: Zhivopis, Moscow, BONFI, 2007

Dmitri Krasnopevtsev was a loner who never belonged to any artistic grouping. He began to draw at the age of four and pursued his art education at the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow, enrolling there in 1949. As a student, Krasnopevtsev often visited the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow, both of which housed important collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. After his graduation, he supported himself as a graphic artist, creating movie posters from 1953 to 1970.

By the late 1950s, still life had become Krasnopevtsev's preferred genre. According to the artist, his love of objects was inspired by his grandfather's collection of stones, sea shells, coins, and medals, which he saw as a young child. Krasnopevtsev's oeuvre is replete with images of familiar objects in unexpected and often disturbing arrangements or states. Pots, pitchers, and vases are frequently broken or displaced. Plants seem desiccated or give the impression of languishing. Bottles, bells, fish, seahorses, and other motifs are often suspended. The juxtapositions of these objects sometimes take on surreal overtones. Krasnopevtsev has reasoned that when an object is taken out of its usual context, it is transformed into an object in its own ideal art world. In his words, "True art is always unreal. It is not a mirror of nature and life, but rather a complicated system of refractions and reflections."

The objects depicted in Krasnopevtsev's still lifes appear to have shed all temporal characteristics. He has explained that these works were intended to reveal a realm of balance, order, and tranquility in order to evoke feelings of serenity and permanence, qualities often absent from contemporary life. He achieves the desired calming effects in part through his use of muted grayish and purplish tones.