Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy

Introduction |Works Picture |Locale Picture

On the warm earth Russian art master B.M.Сидорова.oil painting exhibition

show time：2015-10-10 to 2015-10-21
Organizer：Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture, foreign Affairs Office of Beijing Municipal Government, China's ambassador to Russia council, The Russian embassy in China culture, and Russian charity cultural foundation “ART”
venue：1st and 2nd floor in Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy

Hosted by Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture, foreign Affairs Office of Beijing Municipal Government, China's ambassador to Russia council, The Russian embassy in China culture, and Russian charity cultural foundation “ART”, and undertaken by Beijing Fine Art Academy, the opening ceremony of “on the warm earth” was held on 10th October, 2015. This exhibition shows 82 masterpieces of the artist from the 50s. The pursuit of art and the special memories of his time have been fully revealed by his works; We can always be touched by his lingering brushwork.

Sketches: the visible and the invisible

B.M.Сидорова believes in a seemingly simple truth of creation: creation is to record the most shocking things which are closest to our heart and at the same time most valuable. Nevertheless, the “most valuable things that are closest to our heart” are always invisible. So between these two dimension of “visible” and “invisible”, art might be the ideal mediator. B.M.Сидорова insist on his practice of sketching. In the dimension of “visible”, clouds, trees, houses, poultry, and children are painted dreamlike, with large area of colors tiled on the pictures, and we can feel the vitality flowing in these colors. Just like the sky he painted, changing without any pause, and hard to understand. This is what unique about him. And the clear outline of the houses, horizon, rivers deepened his idea: the vision of the viewer can flow smoothly to feel the sound of melting snow, the smooth of spring breeze and the breathe of the sunshine in summer, etc.

Obviously, it is not just art for art, nor creation for the visible things, on the contrast, it is the creation for the invisible things. Just like the famous”On the warm earth”, the visible of the earth and the sensible of the warmth constitute the sound outside. The content the artist painted is simple and at the same time thick like the earth. Both the little girl and her working grandmother are expressing with their own soundless “gaze”, which also exists in his “downpour”. The sound of the rain and laugh seems to be frozen in a certain detail, defusing the pause of their playing in the rain. The artist uses visible things to express the invisible things----the “most valuable things that are closest to our heart”

Duplicate: continuous memory

Russian essayist, playwright once commented in one of his articles that “not everyone can keep their happiness in childhood in his/her memory, B.M.Сидороваnot only keeps it, but also view everything from children’s eyes. ”. In the 20th century, the global were suffering from nearly the same experiences. Born in 1928, B.M.Сидороваcould not escape from that, but in his work, there is barely any reflection about wars, death or separation. On the contrary, his works are filled with descriptions about his personal life, his childhood, the fields and the natural sceneries. For the viewers, these might be “delightful”, but for the artist, they seem to imply the intention to keep the memories alive.

There is a documentary photo like this: someday, B.M.Сидороваwas leaning on the window, looking outside with the sky, the horizon, the Volga river, the mound and tress. Is this a scenery or a picture, or in other words, was he watching the scenery or the picture? We might refer to the line of the famous poet Bian Zhilin” you stand on the bridge watching the scene, the one watching the scene on the pavilion is watching you, your window is beautified by the bright moon and your appearance makes the dream of others even sweetier.”. So B.M.Сидорова’s creation is not merely landscape painting, but through continuous “staring” and “memory” to reach a state of “description”. As for this scenery, it is a village alongside the Volga River with a special name “forty stump” where was the birthplace of B.M.Сидорова, and he spent his childhood here with his grandmother. Among the works shown in this exhibition, many of them are dealing with this landscape like “Riverside of the Volga”, “Cold winter and the sun”, “last month in autumn”, “peplum of the rainbow” etc. Ranging from 1967 to 2013, during which in his works, they are the eternal Volga river in time, and the poetry existing in memory; They have different names but share the same unforgettable memory.

Sketch: Humanity landscape

Although B.M.Сидорова’s work are mainly about landscape, he has implied another aspiration in his description of characters, no matter they are the working farmers or playing children. The artist use a “documentary” way to “represent” them. The “represent” here is not the traditional “transferring and copying”, but a “sketch” to memory. For B.M.Сидорова, memory is not the negative-like static state, but a dynamic and coherent state, like “young sailor back from the holiday”, “the first mowing”, “the singing of a bird”, and “April is coming”, “old shed nearby”, “Golden Autumn”, “someday in May”, ” blossoming garden”, “rainbow in the garden” etc. So, B.M.Сидорова’s sketch to the memory add the picture with vitality and intertextuality, and this is also why we won’t have a feeling of surplus though there is repeating images existing in his works. Actually, the intertextuality of the work not only easing the possibility, but also helps the artist fulfilled the “Gestalt” creation in both time and space.

Thus, through this exhibition, on one hand we can fully get to know about the swirling inside structure inside the works of B.M.Сидорова, diachronically , synchronically and multidimensional, singly forming his understanding about art, the memory of his life, especially how he missed and descried his childhood. On the other hand, what important is not how these impressions precisely shown in the natural environment, but how the artist make it possible to use art to explain life and time. What triggers our further thinking is that, in the materialistic city, how B.M.Сидорова was able to reclaim such a pure land for his heart? He himself might be the only who could answer this question.