Valerii Volkov

The name of the artist and art historian Valerii Alexandrovich Volkov is often connected to the work of his father, Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov (1886–1957), a great Uzbek artist of the early twentieth century. The elder Volkov exerted a direct influence on the development of his son, acquainting him with artistic devices of both the avant-garde and classical painting. He also recruited Mihail Chemiakin (1875–1944), a student of Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, to be a mentor for his fifteen-year-old son. The effects of these lessons can be clearly seen in Valerii Volkov’s early work. He received art education at the Benkov Art College in Tashkent (now the P. P. Benkov Republican College of Arts), graduating in 1947. In 1952, he completed his studies at the Central Asian State University with a degree in art history.

Volkov’s early period is characterized, in his own words, by “the tradition of figurative genre painting.”[1] Under Chemiakin’s influence, his realistic portraits show traits of art nouveau and impressionism. This can be felt especially in the early portraits of Svetlana Zavadovskaia, the artist’s wife, as well as in his late work Tsaritsa Meroe [Queen of Meroe] (2007). In his still life Granaty i solntse [Pomegranates and Sun] (1961), one can trace Volkov’s internal dialogue with his father’s painting Granatovaia chaykhana [Pomegranate Teahouse] (1924): the vivid color scale of the pomegranates’ red hues, the composition, and the cubist forms recall his father’s famous canvas.

Volkov’s mature work developed through the activity of the New Creative Brigade, as he called it, which was also known as the Second Volkov Brigade. Volkov created this association in the late 1960s by way of analogy to the Volkov Brigade, organized by his father in Uzbekistan in 1931–32. The Second Volkov Brigade exists to this day, despite the deaths of two of its members, Volkov and Yevgeny Kravchenko. Its traditions are upheld by Volkov’s younger son, Alexander, and the sculptor Damir Ruzybaev.

Volkov’s transition from realist painting to abstraction began in Uzbekistan in 1962, when the group of artists worked in Margilan. The works Buria v Margilane [Storm in Margilan] (1963) and Zarosli dzhidy [Thickets of Jida] (1969) expressed the artist’s new vision. He transitioned toward abstraction not by pursuing purely coloristic effects, but by seeking new approaches to depicting reality. These first experiments with texture, vibrational color effects, and a special way of rendering figures led to the development of an individual style that he referred to as “nonfigurative realism.”

Volkov explained his views on art in a series of art-historical writings and in his diaries.[2] He was not in the mainstream of Soviet art and maintained his own originality. Because of this, Soviet critics hindered the popularization of his work; nonetheless, he came to be recognized by foreign admirers and extraordinary personalities such as Igor Savitsky, the founder of the Nukus Museum of Arts.

Volkov himself noted that although he left Uzbekistan in 1966, he maintained an attachment to Central Asia. Eastern imagery and bright color schemes, based on his father’s red palette, formed the foundation of his painterly style for years to come. The artist created a series of drawings and paintings about bazaars. The Zimmerli Art Museum’s collection has four works from this series: three drawings from 1972—Variant No. 1, Variant No. 2, and Variant No. 3 (D00115.01–.03)—and the work Oriental Bazaar (1972, D04877). They call back to his father’s perception of color in Central Asia, the riot of vivid strokes and small figures that fully occupy the space, as if the canvas is a colorful carpet.

Volkov lived and worked in both Uzbekistan and Russia, but traveled a great deal around Europe and Egypt, places that were reflected in his paintings and drawings. Four works acquired by the Zimmerli Museum were made in 1966 while the artist was in France. These are Nice. Variation no. 1 (1966, 1996.0805), Kaleidoscope (1967, 1996.0806), Composition for Antoinette and Gerard (1968, 1996.0809), and Decorative Composition, (1967, 1996.0810). During long trips to Europe, Volkov met contemporary French artists of Russian extraction, such as André Lanskoy (1902–1976), Nicolas de Stael (1914–1955), and Marc Chagall (1887–1985), and studied European architecture and museums. These experiences considerably enriched Volkov’s knowledge, and over these years, he transitioned to abstract expressionism. According to Ruzybaev, Volkov’s knowledge of contemporary art enriched the members of his Brigade. “Through Volkov we learned about European art and became just as original,” Ruzybaev recalled. [3] These foreign trips brought even more saturated color to Volkov’s palette and expanded the range of his explorations at the border of figuration and abstraction. The Central Asian ornamentation intrinsic to his art merged with Western abstraction, giving his painting a vivid individual style.

Under the impression of the stained glass at the Chartres Cathedral, Volkov began to paint mosaiclike compositions with pointillist scatterings of colors, “a confusion of strokes.” The artist saw Asia in those stained glass windows, and later read the words of poet Paul Valery: “Windows of Chartres—lapis, enamel. The Orient.” [4] Volkov had kept this thought to himself so as not to offend the French, but Valery’s remark reassured him of the correctness of his observation. Kaleidoscope and Decorative Composition are also inspired by the these feelings and impressions.

The Zimmerli Museum’s In the Arena (1978, ZAM, D11075), from his series Corrida, conveys the drama and action of the running of the bulls alongside the event’s festive, theatrical mood. Viewers can sense the atmosphere through the expressive quality of hot red, symbolizing the tense state and expectation of blood. Overall, the Zimmerli Museum’s collection has nine works by Volkov from 1960s and ’70s, reflecting a transitional period of the artist’s work from his early figuration to abstract expressionism. 

Marinika Babanazarova

Translated from Russian by Brian Droitcour

Notes:

1. Volkov, Andrei, ed. Valerii Volkov. Moscow: Edizione V papergraf, 2012: 12.

2. Volkov, Valerii Volkov: 313–75.

3. Author’s personal communication with Damir Ruzybaev during the preparation of this article.

4. As quoted by L. Desinova in Volkov, Valerii Volkov: 12.