Alexander Kedrin

Alexander Kedrin is an artist with an original worldview, whose work has unfolded over the course of several decades and in several countries, from Uzbekistan to the United States. His unique method of self-expression combines elements of Eastern decorative and applied art and Western abstraction, leading to works that are complex yet intelligible in any cultural context.

Kedrin was born in Tashkent in 1940. His father, Veniamin Kedrin, came from an old noble family, and was educated as an artist at Leningrad’s VKhUTEMAS (Higher state artistic and technical studios). At the start of the 1930s, to escape Stalinist repressions, he moved to Central Asia. In the 1940s, he became interested in the creation of bookplates, and became an acknowledged master of the craft.

The artistic atmosphere of the Kedrin family influenced young Alexander’s worldview. He had the chance to socialize with such famous figures of the Uzbek 1920s and ’30s avant-garde as Alexander Volkov (1886–1957), Mikhail Kurzin (1888–1957), and Nadezhda Kashina; these meetings played in important role in his artistic development. Although during his adolescence, Uzbek art found itself constrained by the dictates of socialist realism, Kedrin nonetheless avoided these official regulations and instead chose the path of artistic experimentation and inner freedom.

In 1956, he enrolled at the Republican Art College named after P. P. Benkov, but in 1959, in his fifth year, he was expelled for organizing an “unauthorized” exhibition. He was later reinstated and received his diploma in 1961. On the advice of his father, Kedrin turned to ceramics and went on to complete his studies at Tashkent’s A. N. Ostrovsky State Institute of Theatrical Arts and Design (in 2012 merged into the Uzbekistan State Art and Culture Institute, Tashkent), graduating from the monumental painting department with a specialization in ceramics (1961–66).

For Kedrin, ceramics became a perfect opportunity to realize his innovative ideas while avoiding accusations of formalism. Kedrin quickly found a medium for his ideas; for him, large wall plate-panels successfully replaced canvases. Abstract compositions that in those years were not acceptable in paintings were perfectly appropriate for ceramic panels, which impressed viewers with their bright colors and complicated, fantastic lines and forms, leaving the work open to interpretation. Ceramics were considered a purely decorative applied art and were not considered to be an ideological threat. Therefore, in creating his non-objective compositions, Kedrin found an opportunity to speak truth in art.

Kedrin is also well known as a monumental ceramicist. In the 1960s, artistic life in the USSR began to feel more free, which allowed him to execute some openly formalist ideas. In the 1970s and ’80s, as interest built in the concept of national identity, Kedrin’s monumental works, stylized as Uzbek national ornaments, soon gained acclaim. His works decorated many public buildings all over the Soviet Union, including administrative centers, palaces of culture, and sports complexes. He is one of the originators and artists who worked on the Prospekt kosmonavtov metro station in Tashkent, which opened in 1984; he is also the artist responsible for the finishing and reliefs of Весна [Spring] and Осень [Autumn] in the vestibule of the capital city’s Palace of the Friendship of the Peoples (1980). Kedrin also created the reliefs in the musical and drama theater in Kokand, as well architectural objects in Samarkand, Sochi, and Zheleznovodsk. All this activity brought Kedrin further acclaim, and he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR and the Union of Architects of the USSR, as well as an Honored Artist of Uzbekistan.

Even as a ceramicist whose work was much in demand, Kedrin remained loyal to his real passion—abstract painting. Over the course of nearly thirty years of working “for the desk drawer,” he developed his own artistic language, which he defined as “metarealism,” a kind of metaphorical realism. Borrowed from the world of poetry, which was significant for him, this term reflected his desire to create a domain of spiritual reality that was rich with fantastic images. His experience in working with ceramic glazes in also had an effect on his painting style, informing his love of bright, localized spots of color, flowing lines, and characteristic leaks of paint. 

From the 1970s on, Kedrin socialized with Moscow’s artistic intelligentsia, including such well-known figures as Ernst Neizvestny, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Boris Messerer, Vladimir Nemukhin, and Nikolai Vechtomov. Through his involvement in these circles of the capital city’s creative elite, Kedrin became familiar with the work of foreign artists, including Joan Miró, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, and others. Kedrin’s universal yet unique artistic style thus arose from the intersection of his immersion in Eastern abstract decoration and his understanding of Western abstraction.

In 1995, a time of political and social upheaval in the post-Soviet space, Kedrin moved to New York, where he became actively involved in artistic life. His works attracted the attention of museums, galleries, and private collectors. Vandart Gallery organized a solo exhibition in Canada in 1998. Kedrin represented the United States at the Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art. In 2012, the American TV series Russian Celebrities in America filmed an episode in which contemporary cultural figures, including Ernst Neizvestny, spoke about Kedrin’s work. In 2014, Moscow’s State Museum of Oriental Art hosted the exhibition Александр Кедрин. Постижение замысла [Alexander Kedrin. Comprehension of concept], which featured about seventy works made since the late 1950s. Successful exhibitions of Kedrin’s work have also been held in New York (1997, 2002, 2007, 2011), in Florence (2003), at the Zimmerli Art Museum, at the Museum of Contemporary Russian Art in Jersey City, NJ (2006, now MORA), and in Berlin (1985).

Kedrin’s work presents a synthesis of Eastern decorative and applied arts and Western abstract expressionism. He does not try to reproduce the surrounding world; rather, his ceramic panels and paintings become fantastic puzzles and allegories, opening up spaces for reflection and making a search for spiritual meaning possible for the viewer.

With time, Kedrin has expanded to new genres, producing still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and figurative paintings with mythological and biblical themes. Consistent across these genres are the conditionality and expressiveness of his draftsmanship, as well as the vividness of his palette. To understand Kedrin’s more abstract works, it’s important to consider Book of Life, Garden of Gethsemane, The Stars Look Down, Man’s Way, Time to Gather Stones, and Seven Planets.

Kedrin’s journey from Tashkent monumentalism to New York expressionism is a story of an artist’s loyalty to his ideals. Today, interest in Kedrin’s works continues to grow. His work is in collections in Tashkent at the Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan and the State Museum of Applied Arts of Uzbekistan; in Nukus, Uzbekistan; in the I. V. Savitsky State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan; at the Nevzorov Museum of Fine Arts in Semey, Kazakhstan; in Russia at the ARTSTORY Contemporary Art Gallery; in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the State Museum of Oriental Art, both in Moscow; and in New Jersey in the MORA Museum of International Art, Jersey City, as well as the Zimmerli Art Museum. His works are also in international private collections. His work provides an example of an artist overcoming cultural and ideological barriers, yet remaining true to the beliefs and worldview he formed in his youth.

Elmira Gyul

Translated from Russian by Elina Alter