BIOGRAFÍA
Alexey Kvaratskhelia was born in Gali, Georgia, in 1946.
Graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Tbilisi, the class of V. I. Shuhaev, in 1972.
Member of The Union of Artists of Russia since 1986.
Took part in more than 100 exhibitions in Georgia, Abkhazia, Russia, Greece, the USA, the Czech Republic, the Great Britain, France, Finland, Slovenia, Ireland since 1974.
Kvaratskhelia Alexey
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
His works are instantly recognizable.
Not by their subjects or motifs, but by something else - something that cannot be immediately conveyed by words alone. This is possibly the paradoxical combination of sorrow and joy, or the power of a common decorative effect and the precious simplicity of the whole, achieved through hard work, fused with free artisticism.
He has virtually no subjects. Rather, he has motifs that have always been typical of classical painting - portraits, landscapes and still lifes. Remaining within this circle of "eternal motifs," however, he has managed to create his own world - a strange and enchanting world, where joy is always tinged with sadness, while a salutary smile is concealed in the sorrow.
When the simplest thing, something painted many times, is dearest of all to an artist, the most important thing, for him, is the very "substance of art," his own view, his own plastic intonation. To paint the "eternal" - this requires courage or the ability, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, to "trust yourself when all men doubt you."
Kvaratskhelia's world is - at least, at first sight - simple and familiar. This world, however, is seen through his own unsullied view, transformed into the very "substance of art" - into a masquerade in which the eternal bitterness of life often lurks behind the merry masks and elegant dominoes.
Kvaratskhelia did not, of course, immediately find his own polished, refined, personal style.
In his early pictures, we observe a battle between the colour, volume and lines. They do not arrive at a synthesis; temperament and keenness prevented the young artist from merging his own passions with the influence of the great masters (one should mention here the influence of Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso).
It was only with the passage of time that a single, shimmering lava was formed, pouring into the austere linear system constituting the flesh of Kvaratskhelia's art. His characters inhabit a wonderful, magical, colourist world, in which the fragile linearity of the animated drawing shows through the inflorescences.
The artist has managed to do what few have succeeded in doing. He has created not only his own manner and his own individual plastic and chromatic intonation, but also his own world, his own theatre, his own artistic Hoffmanniada. He introduces the tender wisdom of an unforgotten fairytale into the space of serious passions and sorrows.
The action in his pictures often freezes, slowing down or coming to a complete standstill, hiding in the facial expressions and silent dialogues, as in the Sacra Conversazione of the saints before the throne of the Madonna in the paintings of the old Venetians. Or unfolding in the state of solemn immobility known as "by standing."
A game - in the direct or metaphorical form - has always been typical of art. But only in the twentieth century did it define, to such a significant degree, the most important aspects and essential meanings of many movements. In Kvaratskhelia's pictures, homo ludens ("playing man") - a term introduced by famous Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga - is free of cunning postmodernist ambiguities. Huizinga correctly discerned the evil of twentieth-century culture: "Now, in many cases, the game never ends, which means that it is not a real game." Least of all are Kvaratskhelia's characters cunning. Their feelings are open, as in classical plays, yet subtly nuanced, thanks to the artistic, plastic qualities. There is no ambiguity about them, although multi-significance is always present.
Kvaratskhelia's game always remains within the space of clear thought and excellent taste.
Historical time is absent from his pictures. The characters of his pictures live outside temporal realities. They only have a spatial, psychological existence.
A famous designer once said that "the game of the past with the future gives birth to the present." The master has a brilliant command of this game. While there are features of past ages in the outer appearance of Kvaratskhelia's heroes, one can also divine the future in them - its freedom, fantasy and memory. The artist's heroes belong to the turn of the millennia; this is defined not by the costumes, events or objects, but by the art itself, by the artist's refined stylistics.
I would even venture to suggest that, in many of Kvaratskhelia's pictures, the "sad joy" of life frequently adjoins another eternal motif of world culture - the motif of a reflection or a double.
The presence of a hidden mirror is often perceptible in his works. The characters seem to reflect each other's countenances and sensations. They engage in a complex plastic and psychological dialogue. A remarkable "artistic echo" arises, enchanting the viewer.
Paul Verlaine has the following lines:
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire a leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mele au clair de lune. *
This might very well have been written about Kvaratskhelia's heroes.
The meaning and pathos of his art are not confined to this alone. There is also a light and elegant irony. The lines of his pictures are graceful and energetic. There is a polished force about them. They are sometimes syncopated, unexpected and, therefore, simply delightful. The most enchanting feature of the texture of his canvases is their "madness," imperiously drawing the eye, giving the viewer the joy of contact with a rare professional culture.
His masquerades and carnivals exude merriment. Although the faces and masks are sad, the painting triumphs, bearing delight inside the very matter, inflorescences and rhythms.
Professor Mikhail German,
Member of the Liberal Arts Academy and
the International Association of Art Critics (AICA),
Senior curator of contemporary art, the State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg.
Fuente
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