Tamara Luuk

Curator's foreword

Vladimir Yankilevsky

Born and raised in Moscow, Vladimir Yankilevsky emigrated to the USA, later settled in France, and acquired French citizenship. Valeri Vinogradov, on the other hand, married in Estonia, completed his painting studies at the Estonian State Art Institute, and chose Estonian citizenship. Both artists bring with them the experiences of their formative years, their unique talents, and their distinctive skills.

Similar to Ülo Sooster’s junipers from Hiiumaa, which continued to thrive in the paintings he created in Moscow, Vladimir Yankilevsky carried the only societal reality he had known for fifty years – Soviet reality – into the works he later created in Paris. Yankilevsky arrived in the West as an established artist. The figurative elements in his paintings, his people, seem to remain confined in a straitjacket resembling a gray uniform, even when depicted naked. The abstract, symbolic side of his work, however, has always drawn from the artist’s inner world, remaining original and unique. In Yankilevsky’s works, the inner lives of people unfold as a cosmos of colourful symbols, offering a way to transcend the dull realism of everyday life. His art reflects the coexistence of past, present, and future longing that resides within each of us.

“The ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ person – these are the two ‘selves’ that live within each of us. The inner self is solitary, representing our inner life. The outer self exists within the conditionality of society. The inner self observes the outer one, sometimes with self-admiration, sometimes with hatred, and sometimes with self-irony (which is more productive). This creates a dramatic spiritual space within a person. […] I believe that such a conflict, when it arises, is always relevant.”¹

Abstractionism became the cornerstone and a vital artistic choice for Valeri Vinogradov, nearly 15 years younger than Yankilevsky – a decision he made during his studies at the Estonian State Art Institute (ERKI). “I felt like I went from boiling water to cold water, or vice versa. ERKI was a trial by fire, where I tested all kinds of art movements and styles, eventually arriving at abstraction. […] Realism is primitive, it’s a dead art. […] With abstraction, you can say everything. I’m not interested in what lies between the two – maybe someday, but not now.”²

Both Vladimir Yankilevsky and Valeri Vinogradov share an unwavering belief in the timelessness of great art.

As a contemporary and friend of Ilya Kabakov, Ülo Sooster, Yuri Sobolev, Ernst Neizvestny, and Eduard Shteinberg, Vladimir Yankilevsky was part of a group of artists who deviated from the mainstream endorsed by the Soviet regime, positioning themselves as dissenting voices within the Soviet art world. They sought to develop a visual language that was broader and more adequate for engaging with the contemporary world than what was permitted by the political system they lived under.

Eli Belyutin, who was dismissed from his teaching position at the Moscow Institute of Printing and later established his own studio, inspired with his teachings (e.g., “If you are depicting a stool, imagine it with the feeling that it once held the weight of a hanged man!”).³ This resonated with the passionate emotionality that young Yankilevsky was seeking to express. Seeing Pablo Picasso’s works firsthand and encountering exhibitions of abstract art at the International Youth Festival were both a revelation and a shock for Yankilevsky, as they were for many Estonian artists. Until then, his desperate lack of information had been compensated largely by studying classical art in the library of foreign literature in Moscow.

A similar lack of knowledge – this time about his own origins – marked Yankilevsky’s family history. “Compared to me, my Airedale terrier was a prince; he had a pedigree going back 16 generations. I had complete emptiness,” Yankilevsky said, describing the rootlessness of his family, shaped by communist ideology. “As a communist, my father wrote on official forms that he had no relatives abroad. But he did. […] Eli [my father’s older brother] fought in the war just like my father did, only in the American army. Correspondence with him became possible only after Stalin’s death. After fifty years of separation, living 5,000 kilometers apart, the Jewish brothers began arguing about whose president was better – Kennedy or Khrushchev. […] Perhaps this hidden heritage drew my attention to literature, history, and events related to Jewish life and identity abroad. These pieces came together like a puzzle of Jewish destinies, which, to me, felt similar to the life of an artist. […] It filled me with warmth and pride for my people and a sense of belonging, but also sadness for a societal system that produced equally talented Jewish scoundrels.”⁴

In his pursuit of understanding the driving forces behind the world and art, as well as the tensions within both, Yankilevsky frequently turned to his favourites – the art of Ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Early Renaissance. The concept of force fields became a central theme in his early paintings, leading him to juxtapose abstract forms. He improvised and explored with increasing depth and a growing ability for abstraction, combining polarities and examining the interaction between them: cosmos and chaos, feminine and masculine, the eternal and the fleeting, light and darkness. This exploration led to the foundational principle of Yankilevsky’s triptych system: on the left, a frontal view of a female figure; on the right, a profile of a male head; and in the charged central section, a dynamic field of dialogue between them.

As part of a provocation orchestrated by academics, works created in the 15 m² apartment of the Yankilevskys were exhibited at the 30th-anniversary exhibition of the Moscow Artists’ Union at Manege in 1962. Among them were the over 6-meter-long five-part piece Atomic Station and Triptych No. 2: Two Beginnings. These works crackled and vibrated with tension, stripped of any pretense of harmony or conventional beauty. Even today, they seem to confront the viewer with an uncompromising demand: “Truth! No harmony, no beauty, no conventionality, no agreed-upon values – just truth!”

It is no surprise that Nikita Khrushchev, upon seeing the exhibition, lost his temper, shouting “Scrawlers!” and “Pederasts!” – words that would go on to shape the destinies of many artists for decades. Yankilevsky was not the only one affected. When Khrushchev asked, “What is this?”, Ülo Sooster, speaking Russian with an Estonian accent, replied, “Junipers!” Khrushchev, now suspicious, asked, “A foreigner?” and, upon hearing a whispered explanation – “from the camps” – quickly turned away. Yankilevsky often recalled two of Khrushchev’s statements, which he found particularly revealing: “All foreigners are enemies,” and “When it comes to art, I am a Stalinist.”

Over the next 25 years of his creative career, Vladimir Yankilevsky had only two solo exhibitions in his homeland. His despair over the possibility that his art might never reach a broader audience led him to create auto-monographic albums documenting the evolution of his work from 1954 to 1980. These albums are now preserved in the Kandinsky Library at the Pompidou Center. Like many Russian nonconformist artists, Yankilevsky existed within his own circle of interaction and creativity, outside the visible Soviet art scene, as his work was not recognised by official art policy. Interest in his art came from abroad – at times opportunistic, at times genuine. This culminated in the 1988 Sotheby’s auction in Moscow, which disrupted the Soviet art world, simultaneously elevating and corrupting it by introducing a number of officially unrecognised artists to a Western audience eager for novelty.

In 1988, Yankilevsky was granted permission to travel to New York for his retrospective exhibition. He returned the following year with a work visa to prepare for a new exhibition. In 1992, he moved to Paris, where Dina Vierny, a prominent gallerist and patron of the arts lived. Vierny’s gallery, along with the Claude Bernard Gallery, was among the oldest and most prestigious in Paris. Yankilevsky became one of the artists represented by Vierny’s gallery, while his Moscow friend, Eduard Shteinberg, began collaborating with the Claude Bernard Gallery.

Former model for Aristide Maillol and Henri Matisse, Dina Vierny founded the Dina Vierny-Maillol Foundation and the Maillol Museum in 1995. Among the works she exhibited was Yankilevsky’s iconic piece The Door (1972). This marked the first time the artwork had been displayed since it was smuggled out of the Soviet Union in 1974 – 21 years after its creation – but its original concept was completely disregarded. Designed to open in three parts to symbolically represent the three realities of life for a communal apartment resident, the door was instead exhibited closed, offering viewers only the exotic allure of Soviet-era doorbells and nameplates. Though Yankilevsky often emphasised that Europe is a museum while New York and America pulsate with vibrant artistic life, misunderstandings regarding the interpretation and preservation of his works also occurred in the United States.

Although the city of Paris provided Yankilevsky with studio and living spaces (2004), and the French government granted citizenship to him and his wife (2000), and despite his exhibitions being held in various countries and his works being acquired by public and private collections – including Russian ones – Yankilevsky, who had always steered clear of the mainstream, often struggled with a deep sense of longing and loneliness. He once remarked: “I came to the West at the age of 50, not as a young man starting his career. My entire circle of friends, the entire artistic environment in which I developed, remained in Moscow.”⁵ Yankilevsky’s wife and lifelong companion, Rimma, poignantly expressed the shared sense of loss during our conversation: “My city is Moscow, but my people are no longer there.”

И в одиночестве ночи

Один во всей Вселенной ты

Чертишь из глубины души

Безумных символов следы⁶

Vladimir Yankilevsky passed away in Paris in 2018, leaving behind an immense legacy: 40 triptychs, three pentaptychs, installations, paintings, pastels, collages, graphic works, and an innumerable number of drawings.

Valeri Vinogradov

С пейзажами давно я завязал –

их не берут в художественный зал:

ландшафты здесь не делают погоды

и я стараюснь не отстать от моды.

За натюрморт не купишь сахар, к чаю:

я – инсталяции научно изучаю!

/—/

Концепции несу широким шагом,

под сине-черно-белым флагом!⁷

Valeri Vinogradov was born in 1952 in Moscow. He began studying art during elementary school. In his final year at a secondary art school, he met his future wife, an Estonian art student. Following this, he moved to Tallinn and enrolled in the painting department of the Estonian State Art Institute (ERKI). At some point, both Valeri and his fellow students came to recognise that the rigorous training in realism, long out of favour in Estonia, still provided the inquisitive young Russian artist with a unique advantage.⁸

A glimpse into Vinogradov’s student works from the early 1980s, preserved in the museum of the Estonian Academy of Arts, reveals his use of subdued and muted colour schemes that continue the traditions of Soviet painting. However, when compared to his diploma work from his Moscow art school days, which radiates monumentality, the works from his time at ERKI showcase a bold departure into a freer artistic realm. These pieces feature flowing forms, boundary-breaking approaches, and even hints of humour. His 1985 self-portraits make it evident that colour was – and continues to be – the central focus of his artistic expression.

Valeri extensively experiments and explores various styles, including surrealism, cubism, and Picasso’s approach to abstract figurativeness, both prior to his time at ERKI, throughout his studies there, and after his graduation.

And then it arrives – the pull toward abstraction, which proves to be the most fitting form for Valeri’s diverse experiments with shape and structure, becoming the foundation of the strongest aspects of his work to this day. “With abstract paintings, you can express the same as with realistic ones. Generalisation conveys the idea and emotions, and colour sets the mood. Sincerity is the most important thing in art, along with a sense of taste, moderation, and boundaries.”⁹ By the late 1980s and early 1990s, during a period of newfound freedoms, he boldly experimented with irrational, colourful chaos, striving to bring order to it through both colour and geometry. There is no inevitability in this process. Abstraction is a choice.

Undoubtedly, young Valeri Vinogradov was a strong advocate of “painterly painting,” aligning himself with artists like Peeter Mudist, Tiit Pääsuke, and Enn Põldroos. He firmly believed in the existence of timeless, great art and was prepared to dedicate himself to it. At the same time, he also appreciated the smaller joys and discoveries of the present moment. Among the most touching of these were the meticulously and passionately created works by unknown artists, sometimes with a signature. Valeri was one of the first to discover and collect Adelbert Juks’ paintings. He was deeply fascinated by naivism and all forms of simplicity. He had a keen eye for the old and often “second-rate,” and the ability to find something remarkable within it. Whenever possible, he purchased affordable but high-quality realist works or pieces painted in the spirit of the Paris School from consignment shops. Naturally, he was also drawn to Nikolai Kormashov’s collection of icon paintings.

Valeri Vinogradov entered the euphoric art scene of the 1990s through abstract painting that explored the extremes of black and white, a direction he had already reached by the late 1980s. His approach was markedly different from the expressive or geometric abstraction familiar in the region. His work emphasised the whole, avoiding an overemphasis on details, and was laconic yet expressive, as well as detached yet demanding deep engagement. Vinogradov’s art quickly drew attention and recognition. His first awards and acquisitions soon followed: in 1988, a medal at the Baltic Triennial of Young Art; in 1992, the Konrad Mägi Award and medal; in 1993, the Grand Prix at the 9th Vilnius Painting Triennial; and in 2010, the Kristjan Raud Award.

Over the years, Valeri Vinogradov’s paintings have grown increasingly subtle and refined – so delicate, nuanced and perfected that Mihkel Ilus remarked in 2013 about the Forest painting series: “When it comes to abstract series, one might ask whether the author’s infinitely long string of monologues contributes in any way to a dialogue with the audience. I believe it does not. Experiencing Valeri Vinogradov’s works requires, instead, the audience’s willingness to recognise the artist’s effort and character. This also means acknowledging that the price of beauty is solitude; without it, such mature works would not come into being.”¹⁰

The layers of paint applied to the canvas, repeatedly sanded and repainted, produce a translucent glow, giving an entirely flat surface the illusion of texture and dynamism. Through his meticulous and loving treatment of the canvas, Vinogradov approaches his work like a master furniture maker or restorer, someone who revives the natural material’s ability to breathe. It seems that Estonia has given Valeri more than one might realise at first glance: a scale of perception that suits him, a depth unburdened by extremes, the space for solitude and silence, the presence of craftsmanship and nature, and a deep appreciation for beauty. The beauty of Estonian history resides in its everyday rituals. To uncover their quiet power, it required the unique perspective of Valeri Vinogradov.

However, there is another side to Vinogradov’s self-expression, one that sacrifices far less of his own identity in pursuit of a work’s perfection. As in naïve painting, Valeri has a deep affection for folk humour in both song and imagery. Through his words, accompanying collages, and lifelike realist scenes painted with apparent ease, his “Russianness” emerges most vividly. In Soviet society, such critical humour could only exist anonymously, as a form of folk art, whereas in Estonia, it transforms into an unmistakably personal performance by Valeri Vinogradov. His satire targets the absurdities of society, reducing their occasionally monumental proportions to biting irony. His arrows are aimed equally at Russia and Estonia, and neither America nor Europe is spared.¹¹

His words and images mocking current issues distill down to human imperfection and vices – most often, drinking oneself senseless, politicians embodying stupidity, and Putin symbolising fatal evil. Simple and direct. To recognise the drunkard, the politician, or the predator, the characters representing them must be rendered realistically, as seen with the Amur tiger, Vladimir Putin, or the seagull tearing apart its prey. However, unlike the socially critical art typically practiced in the local art scene, Valeri Vinogradov’s interpretations of contemporary issues provide him with the freedom to speak his mind without restraint.

Vinogradov’s storytelling and creation of humorous tales have occasionally been described as conceptualist. If so, it is a kind of playful, at times witty, and illustrative lubok-conceptualism that steers clear of making profound generalisations. Valeri’s greatest word-image abstraction is The Russian Foundation – Vodka, Pushkin, Soul; his warmest and most sentimental works are Son and Daughter; and his most dramatic is God the Father. But only in the titles, because when painting, Valeri always follows his own path, where the expression of human emotionality and sensitivity is carried by colour and the composition of the painting. When the “eternality” of abstraction or the “unequivocalness” of realism begins to bore him, he turns to spontaneous, intuitively flowing painting as a form of play. And when the canvas becomes tiresome, he paints over magazine photos or reproductions, experimenting to see what might emerge.¹²

Although difficult to compare, it is undeniable that Vinogradov’s painting is far more powerful than his humorous texts and images, as it resists being interpreted in a straightforward or unambiguous manner.¹³

Valeri Vinogradov, much like Vladimir Yankilevsky, often works on series that span years. However, he does not feel the need to interpret the world through a model of measuring the inner self against the outer self deformed by society, a concept central to Yankilevsky’s work. Nor does he rely on the expressive power of line as a measure of thought, as Yankilevsky does with his constant and masterful drawing. Instead, Vinogradov places his trust in the self-sufficiency of form and colour, allowing his works to emerge organically as he follows and flows with them.

“An aesthetic sense of truth,” says Mihkel Ilus.¹⁴ „Irrationality open to pulsating sensuality. His image is sensually beautiful,“ adds Eha Komissarov.¹⁵ And although both artists are “long-distance runners,” they are driven by different motivations. Valeri Vinogradov often steps off the track, lies down to gaze at the sky, or picks blades of grass, while Vladimir Yankilevsky never forgets, even for a moment, that the road is long, very long, and that an inevitable destination lies at its end. We might be tempted to conclude that one embodies system and truth, while the other represents beauty and pleasure. However, such a conclusion would be far too hasty and simplistic – far too black-and-white in a world filled with colour.¹⁶

… … 1999

…
…
1999