Viktor Pivovarov

Viktor Pivovarov was born in Moscow in 1937. He began his artistic education at the Moscow Kalinin School of Industrial Arts (1951–57). After unsuccessfully applying to the Surikov Institute, he applied to the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, where, following examinations by Eli Beliutin (1925–2012), he was admitted.

It was during his studies there that Pivovarov encountered the work of Hieronymus Bosch—a discovery that left his head spinning. “For me, torn between a boundless love of classicism and a fervent, fresh adoration of contemporary art, Bosch offers the hope of finding a golden mean. In form he is a classicist, in content a modernist. I was besotted with Bosch—enduringly.” [1] Bosch’s influence is apparent in several of Pivovarov’s small paintings: St. Sebastian, The Island, The Feast, and Self-Portrait.

Pivovarov divides his work into two periods, one spent in Moscow and one in Prague. In Moscow, he spent several years after the completion of his studies illustrating books, especially children’s books. While still enrolled at the Polygraphic Institute, Pivovarov began frequenting publishing houses in search of work. At one of them, Znanie [Knowledge], he met Yuri Sobolev, the newly appointed art director, who began introducing him to various underground artists. It wasn’t long before Pivovarov found himself at the center of Moscow’s unofficial art world. A devotee of surrealism, Sobolev urged all the artists working for Znanie in that direction. Pivovarov made his debut as an illustrator in 1964, working for the Detskaia Literatura [Children’s Literature] publishing house, and since then has illustrated more than 50 books. Pivovarov met Moscow poets Genrikh Sapgir, Igor Kholin, and Ovsei Driz at a party in the mid-’60s. He illustrated several of Sapgir’s books: Wonderwoods (1967), Of Foma and Erema (1971), The Red Balloon (1972), and Pocket Mosquito (1978). In 1968, he began illustrating the children’s magazine Veselye kartinki, and in 1979, he created a logotype of small letter-people, based on the wrapper of the pre-revolutionary candy Deti-shaluny [Little rascals], which, with minor changes, remains in use. From 1968 to 1979, he was the illustrator for the magazine Murzilka [Kitty-cat]. At Detskaia Literatura, he was able to publish several dream projects: Hans Christian Andersen’s Ole Lukøje (1974, ZAM, 2003.0661), Anatolii Pogorelsky’s The Little Black Hen (1973), and poetry collections by Driz (1973) and Sapgir (1970s). “In my Ole Lukøje,” noted Pivovarov, “I brought Andersen together with Bosch. I merged into a united whole Andersen’s dreams, the fantasias of my own childhood (poor in impression as it was), and Bosch’s avant-garde psychedelia, the obsession of my formative years.” [1]

For a long time, Pivovarov counted his work as an illustrator as a sufficient opportunity for self-expression, approaching painting only slowly and, at first, falteringly. Meanwhile, he worked on graphic art. His first serious work in this mode was a monotype titled The Temptation of Saint Anthony, followed by Skulls, The Carnival of Excrement, and The Flowers of Evil, a series of lithographs based on the work of Charles Baudelaire (1972, ZAM, D19942, D19943, D19944).

From the late ’60s through the early ’70s, however, Pivovarov’s interests shifted toward conceptual art. The years from 1972 to 1976 saw a revolutionary surge in Moscow’s art scene, with the emergence of artists like Erik Bulatov (1933–2025), Ilya Kabakov (1933–2023), Komar and Melamid, and Andrei Monastyrsky (b. 1949). Pivovarov began painting his first pictures when he realized that illustrating other people’s texts was not enough for him. Projects for a Lonely Man in 1975 (ZAM, 1991.0895, 2013.016.067–068, 2013.016.081–089), for example, would be recognized as a classic—and would prove foundational to the urgent new movement known as Moscow Conceptualism.

Loneliness is a recurring theme in Pivovarov’s work. In the conceptual cycle Projects for a Lonely Man, the artist defines the inner state of his hero as “conscious loneliness,” in which a person participates fully in social life and the communication with others that it requires, but nevertheless remains lonely. The cycle consists of six large panels or shields, mimicking official diagrams offering an instruction or description: “Project of a living space for a lonely person,” “Project of items of everyday use for a lonely person,” “Project of the sky for a lonely person,” “Daily routine for a lonely person,” “Project of dreams for a lonely person,” and “Project of biography for a lonely person.” This kind of artistic decision clearly reflects the structure of the language of conceptual painting that Pivovarov developed in the early ’70s.

For Pivovarov, who spent many years illustrating books, working with words in a conceptual scheme held a particular fascination. In the ’70s, he collaborated intensively with Ilya Kabakov in a new conceptual form, now known as “albums.” These “albums” demonstrated a wholly original conception of the combination of words with images, which had no precedent in Western art. The manner in which the pages of these albums were presented was also unique, each as an individual work standing on its own lectern, arranged into a sequence to be navigated, introducing the notion of duration to the work. Thus, the form of the “album,” as Pivovarov has noted, while remaining within the framework of fine art, also took on what he called “elements of theatrical performance, film, and literary production.” [1]

In the ’70s, the artist created such albums as Tears (1975), Face (1975), Eros (1976), The Sacralizers (1978), Microhomus (1979), and others. In Face (1975, ZAM, D02121, 2013.016.069.01–20), a narrative is constructed in the form of an appeal to another person who never replies and remains outside the composition, like the main character, whose face is either partly obscured by the objects depicted or barely visible through the gaps in the background. Pivovarov regards Face, Projects for a Lonely Man, and Сonclusions [or, Konkluze] (all 1975) to be a united complex of works, which he calls a “philosophical arch.”

In both his paintings and the pages of his albums, Pivovarov has endeavored to develop an “objective” figurative language through the destruction of painting’s narrative, pictorial, and structural integrity. The fundamental parameters for the creation of this language were as follows: reconsidering the role of color in painting, rejecting the “sensuous deformation” of the object and the artistic gesture, destruction of the unified space of painting, breaking of the logical connections between objects in the painting, open painting, detachment, and understanding of painting as a literary genre.

In 1981, Pivovarov emigrated to Prague. If he conceives of his Moscow period, beginning with his early graphic works and extending to the so-called “empty” abstractions (which he thought of as purely abstract works that did not hint at any other meanings) as a horizontal line stretching from point A to point B, then his Prague period is characterized by moving in circles and spirals, returning to earlier themes and modes of expression. 

In Prague, Pivovarov has continued to develop the “pictorial” theater he first conceived in Moscow, though the “performances” he has staged in Prague differ sharply. Just as in his Moscow productions, the “actors” in this theater are essentially emblematic objects: a house, a window, a fence, a room, a staircase, a sofa, a table and chairs, a candle, a skull, an eye, a detached leg, a blue ear, etc. It is from such sign-objects that the paintings are constructed. But a single image could no longer accommodate the mise-en-scène’s entire spectrum. Thus, larger cycles have emerged: Diary of a Teenager (1986–88), The Time of the ROSE (1988), Still Lifes (1987–1993), Apartment 22 (1992–94), Eidos series, and Dr. Freud’s Sofa (2001), among others.

In Prague, Pivovarov has turned away from “conceptual” enameled shield-stands and enthusiastically toward oil paint on canvas. Here, he has restarted the interrupted line of the “album” form, and, albeit with a few more interruptions, has continued to work in this form today. Unlike his Moscow albums, which were designed to be encountered intimately in the studio, his new album cycles are intended to be seen in exhibition spaces. Since 1982, he has created albums including Kabakov and Pivovarov (1982), Beautiful Actions (1989), An Agent in Norway (1993), Mamleev and Hypermamleev (1995), The Mechanic’s Footsteps (1999), and others. At the end of the ’90s, he wrote, “My thinking is increasingly preoccupied with realism. I cannot get a rest from the question of whether this seemingly exhausted method contains secret, unexploited potentialities, or is simply a wooden bicycle whose place is in a museum.” [1] He holds a view of realism as multifarious, in which there are as many realisms as there are notable artists.

Pivovarov’s return to realist painting is first visible in his cycle Conversation about a Lemon Peel, which, along with the paintings Old Wallet (1987), Bread, Knife, and Egg (1991), and Dry Leaves, includes about two dozen still lifes completed between 2001 and 2004. The central works of this cycle show the influence of minor Dutch painters, as well as of Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes.

In 2000, Pivovarov began work on an extensive cycle of paintings called Eidos. The title is taken from one of Plato’s fundamental philosophical ideas, which Pivovarov interprets for himself as “the idea, projection, or concept of a thing that precedes its actual embodiment.” The artist’s eide appear as faceless, genderless, anthropomorphic creatures, semi-abstract and anonymous. The series draws heavily on the language of Malevich and de Chirico.

In 2015, Pivovarov created a painting cycle called Lost Keys. He describes the creation of the cycle by saying, “The cycle ‘Lost Keys’ consists of eight paintings. All are recreations of specific and reasonably well-known paintings of authors from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I chose this period because that is precisely when the genre of painting was being established in European art. It was in this period that painting, firstly, peeled itself off the wall (where it had been mosaics and frescoes), and, secondly, where it took on real independence, secularism, formal integrity outside of sacred spaces. … If we recognize the impossibility of an adequate reading of the old masters as a profound loss, it becomes possible to utilize the phenomenon of lost keys as an artistic device. One can deliberately ‘toss into the grass’ the keys that reveal painting’s content, providing the viewer with an opportunity to participate actively in the creative work of interpretation. There is so little freedom in this world. It would be good to keep open at least the possibility of freely understanding and interpreting art.” [1]

Larisa Kashuk

Translated from Russian by Ian Dreiblatt

Photo portrait by Lev Melikhov. Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, D15180.

Notes:

1 Andreeva, Ekaterina. “Viktor Pivovarov: ‘Vliublennyi agent.’” Kriticheskaia massa, 2002, no. 1.