Albertina Museum In Vienna, Part 2

Once again, I didn’t know anything about this artist, so I saved some notes from the exhibit:

Boris Grigoriev is one of those artists who, despite the omnipresent search for new forms of avant-garde expression in the contemporary Eastern European art centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, stuck to figuration and the classical genres. A brilliant draftsman, he initially worked as an illustrator for magazines and made a name for himself as a recognized portraitist of well-known personalities. Self-Portrait with a Cigarette is one of these powerfully expressive portraits.

Grigoriev’s portraits thrive on a direct confrontation with the sitter and the exaggeration of gestures and facial features, as well as the expression of an emotion that captivates the viewer. In this sell-portrait Grigorier presents himself in a defensive posture: the raised shoulder and the skeptical, grim gaze suggest a defensive aloofness; in addition, the figure is viewed from below, by which the artist elevates himself while subordinating the viewer it is through such powerful means that Grigorier lends this traditional genre o modernity that a comparable and roughly contemporaneous with the visoalizations of Expressionism and New Objectivity. Not lost because of the criticism of his “European style,” the artist left Russia in 1919 and settled in Paris in 1921

Speaking of the abovementioned artists, I really liked the description of the Eastern European Avant-Garde from the exhibit:

No other modernist movement saw so many groups of artists breathlessly and seamlessly replacing each other and isms merging within such a short period of time, between 1910 and 1925, as did the avant-garde in Eastern Europe. Artists from today’s Ukraine, today’s Belarus, and other parts of the former Russian Tsarist empire met in the art centers of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Many of these artists-Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Marc Chagall, Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, and others-lived in Paris and Munich in the years around 1910

In an exchange between French and Eastern European art, such figurative positions of the avant-garde as Neo-Primitivism and Rayonism developed at first. Larionov’s and Goncharova’s Neo-Primitivism drew its inspiration from folk art and icon painting and found its parallels in Expressionism and Fauvism. From 1910 onward, French Cubism and Italian Futurism became influential in Eastern Europe. As a consequence, Rayonism (from the French “rayon” for “ray”) emerged as a specific Eastern European variant. in a dynamic pictorial language consisting of overlapping, bundled rays of color. This tendency toward the fragmentation of form paved the way for abstraction and the absolute absence of figuration.

The most consistent form of abstraction turned out to be Constructivism, with compositions characterized by a high degree of technical perfection.

Basic geometric figures are arranged on the picture plane in a balanced way to fathom spatial constructions, the effect of light movement, as well as “color concentrations.” The Constructivists pursued a social goal: architecture, painting, and sculpture should serve society as universal arts. Many Constructivists worked as architects and designers, paving the way for painting expanded to the third dimension and material assemblages.

And lots of Chagall 🙂

The last exhibit we saw was a Fascination Paper, but by then, I had complete information overload. In addition, the light at this exhibit was dimmed, which made it impossible for me to see clearly, regardless of which glasses I wore. I will mention only one interesting piece: