Oleg Vassiliev

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Bern, Kunstmuseum, Ich Lebe - ich sehe, 11 June - 14 August, 1988

 

K. Meier-Rust, 'Warum das Moskauer Kulturleben trotzdem interessant ist', DU: Die Kunstzeitschrift, No.6, 1981, p.57 ill.

Exhibition catalogue, Ich Lebe - ich sehe, Kunstmuseum Bern, 1988, ill.

K. Vassilieva, N. Kolodzei (eds.), Oleg Vassiliev: Memory Speaks, St.Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2004, p.46 ill.

 

 

 

Original canvas. There is a layer of light surface dirt and there are creases running horizontally across the canvas in places. There is a scratch and few lines of craquelure on the right hand edge. Fibres have adhered to the paint sufrace in places. There is an uneven layer of slightly discoloured varnish. UV light reveals no signs of retouching. Unframed.
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These shifting frameworks, the combination of various spaces, all of this affects the fundamentally problematic situation, that two people coexist independently, peacefully but are still very different – in separate spaces.

Oleg Vassiliev cited in Ich Lebe – ich sebe, Kunstmuseum Bern, 1988, p.242

 

 

Oleg Vassiliev's art combines the apparently incompatible.

In the constant search for new means of self-expression, he reaches out simultaneously to the traditions of Russian Realism of the 19^th century and Constructivism of the 20^th century. He fuses genres of landscape and portrait painting and juxtaposes elements from different times and spaces, which often results in very unusual and complex compositions.

 

Constructing the composition for Olga Mikhailovna and Natasha, Vassiliev superimposes the two-dimensional mobile frames in the foreground of a three-dimensional forest landscape. By doing so he focuses the viewer's attention on the two female portraits confined in those frames. Whereas we are visually invited to step inside the forest, our path is blocked and we are confronted with the artist's personal memories, which are the main source of inspiration for Vassiliev's creative process. Here he has represented his memories of Natasha Bulatova, the wife of his close friend Erik Bulatov, and Natasha's mother-in-law from her first marriage to Mikhail Sokovnin, a poet and writer. The two women are lit against the black of the frames by a spotlight which seems to shine from outside the composition itself. As the artist explains himself: "The river of time carries me further and further, and vivid moments in golden light remain on the banks..." ( K.Vassilieva, N.Kolodzei (eds.), Oleg Vassiliev: Memory Speaks, St.Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2004, p.9)