Mikhail Shvartsman

St Petersburg, The State Russian Museum; Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery; Frankfurt am Main, Städel et al., Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, 1996-1997
Verona, Palazzo Forti, L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, 7 March - 4 June 2000
Ashdod, Art Museum Ashdod, Persecuted Art & Artists under Totalitarian Regimes in Europe During the 20th Century, 22 June - 21 September 2003
Bratislava, The Slovak National Gallery, Nonkonformisti. Druhá ruská avantgarda 1955-1988. Zbierka Bar-Gera, 14 November 2008 - 22 February 2009

Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, Cologne: Wienand, 1996, p.220 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, Milan: Electa, 2000, p.158 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Persecuted Art & Artists under Totalitarian Regimes in Europe during the 20th Century, Bönen: Druck Verlag Kettler, 2003, p.198 illustrated; p.283 listed
Mikhail Shvartsman, St Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2005, p.114, no.24 illustrated; p.366, no.63 listed
Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisti. Druhá ruská avantgarda 1955-1988. Zbierka Bar-Gera, Bratislava: Slovenská Národná Galéria, 2008, p.90, no.1 illustrated; p.168 listed as White Incarnation
 

A thin wooden frame is nailed to the edges of the wooden support. Protrusions in the surface of the wood are visible in places and there are a few fine cracks in the paint layer. The varnish layer is uneven and there is a layer of surface dirt with spots of dirt in places. Inspection under UV light reveals a couple of very minor spots of restoration, such as in the top left.
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Mikhail Shvartsman is one of the most significant representatives of the Moscow underground. He was an outstanding artist who created his own philosophical system and remained true to art with a capital A – a rarity for artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Shvartsman felt that he was a vehicle for Christian culture and found a means of artistic expression for his spiritual experience. He defined his art as ‘hieratism’ (from the Greek hieratikos – religious, saintly), a term which expressed the peculiarity of canonical expressive means that were characteristic of ancient and medieval art. At the same time the artist’s creations are far from icons or paintings, he defined them as hieratures.

Shvartsman’s concept was formed during the 1960s and 1970s, but it was only during the later decade that the main features of his style were defined. During these years he created numerous paintings and drawings, having resolved a number of important issues for himself.

Shvartsman’s hieratures are always a complicated combination of abstract forms enclosed by a contour; each form however has its own contour line. Different interior contours serve a different purpose: their lines either emphasise the form or blur its boundaries, marking the form’s readiness for transformation.

The artist separated the terms ‘deformation’ and ‘transformation’. He considered deformation a pernicious break of the form. A transformation, on the other hand, is the very life force of the form in its natural state of metamorphosis.

Past Incarnations is one of the most famous of the early hieratures. This work points to the spiritual connection with the preceding cycle Faces (there is the image of a face at the very edge of the right-hand side of the composition) and shows an already prevailing system in the construction of hieratures.

We would like to thank Dr Olga Yushkova, art historian, for providing this catalogue note.