Vera Ryazanova, who was born in Moscow in 1951, grew up
surrounded by the nightmare of materialism. She received her art
education at the Sourikov Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow where as a
gifted and precocious student she made little attempt to fit in with the
prevailing philosophy of Socialist Realism. Despite the thaw of the
Krushchev years, official Soviet art continued with its preoccupation
with materialist values centred around the heroic soldier-worker ideal. In
contrast, Vera Ryazanova's early art was inward looking, self portraits
and early explorations of spiritual mysticism. In her intellectual interests,
she paid little attention to current Soviet literature, but looked back to
the so-called Russian 'silver epoch', especially the writers and poets
Velimir Khlebnlkov, Osip Mandelshtam and Nikolai Gumelev. Very early
in her thinking there was a perception that the precious spark of inner
life in art that Kandinsky had spoken of, and which in the early decades
of this century was evident in his work as well as in the paintings of such
artists as Pavel Filonov and Mikhail Vrubel", had been crushed by the
weight of Stalinist oppression and the banality of materialist culture and
that it was her mission to somehow revive this spark, foster it and see it
grow into a renaissance. From the outset she believed that her art was
not intended as facile decoration, but had a purpose and a mission and
that she as an artist was only a willing vehicle through which a greater
force could operate. The idea of the artist as a medium is one which has
a long tradition in Russian icon-painting and such aspects as fasting and
prayer as a process of preparation for the act of painting are also
common to the working method of Vera Ryazanova.
PAINTINGS OF LIGHT:
THE ART OF VERA SELL RYAZANOVA
'Wassily Kandinsky in 1911 published his seminal essay Uber das
Getstige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art). Here he wrote
about the 'all-important spark of inner life' re-emerging in art. He
continued 'Our minds, which are even now just awakening after years of
materialism, are infected with despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose of
ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the
universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening
soul in its grip. Only a feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul
when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and
the gulf of darkness reality.
Adagio 1978 (121cm x 90 cm)
EXHIBITIONS :
1967 - Participation in an exhibition of small-size wood sculpture in Moscow at
the age of 16,
1977 - Exhibition at the Heritage Centre, Stony Plain, Alberta
1978 - 'Portraits" Edmonton Public Library, Edmonton, Alberta
1978 - Auswertigen Amt Bonn
1982 - 'Observation of the human face and other appearances', England
1982 - Antonio de Almeida Foundation, Porto
1982 - Paintings and drawings, Gallery of the Hartmannbund, Bonn
1982 - Belgien Cultural Centre
1982 - Bad Homburg
1983 - Bonn
1984 - Manuka Gallery
1985 - Sydney
1986 - Melbourne
1986 - Canberra
1987 - Sydney
1988 - Sydney
1988 and 1991 - Beaver Galleries, Canberra
1990 - Galleria I'Agostirlana, Rome
1992 - Goethe Institut, Casablanca
1992 - Espace d'Art, Rabat
1993 - Espace Culturel Australie, Paris
1993 - Art & Communiquer, Paris
1994 - Gallery l'Amphitrite, Skirat
1995 - Espace Roudana, Rabat
1997 - Art & Prestige, Château d'Allaman
1999 - Gallery Collis, Lausanne
1999 - Les Yeux Noirs, Romont
1999 - 2000 L'Ecluse, Lausanne
Forthcoming exhibitions in Moscow, Leningrad, Paris
Pianissimo 1978 (50cm x 56cm)
