Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev is one of the most significant representatives of Soviet nonconformism in the second half of the 20th century. The first works of the artist belong to the post-war period, and the style that D.M. Krasnopevtsev as a truly original artist, formed by the beginning of the 60s. When characterizing this style, the term "metaphysical still life" is most often used.
Dmitry Krasnopevtsev (1925 - 1994).
Poetics D.M. Krasnopevtsev is the poetics of "unnecessary things" (the term of the artist himself). An “unnecessary thing” can be perceived in different ways, and least of all, an unnecessary thing is awarded some positive assessments; in the perception of the artist, it is the positive content of such things that comes to the fore; Dmitry Krasnopevtsev's paintings show not just "unnecessary things" in their everyday factuality and earthiness. - Any thing is beautiful in its own way, and this is - equally- refers to both things that are necessary and things that are unnecessary. Unnecessary things, like everything that exists, have their own beauty. And it is her painting Krasnopevtsev and shows.
What does it mean for a thing to be (or become) unnecessary? - Brokenness, inferiority, destruction - in the first place. In Krasnopevtsev's paintings, as a rule, things contain the imprint of destruction. - Unnecessary is that which is corrupted, and it is precisely because of its corruption that a thing becomes unnecessary.
D. Krasnopevtsev. Still life with rolls of paper - white and blue. 1980.
Destruction, most often, is the disintegration of the form. - Within the framework of traditional aesthetics, a decaying form cannot be beautiful in principle; the disintegration of form refers to the aesthetics of the ugly, to formlessness as the materialized presence of chaos.
But D.M. Krasnopevtsev has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the ugly. His aesthetics - and this is the paradox of his work - in fact, continues the line of classical aesthetics in painting: Dmitry Krasnopevtsev paints beauty. And his aesthetics, accordingly, is not the “aesthetics of the ugly”, but the “aesthetics of the beautiful”. At the same time, the artist’s style does not know any discrimination inherent in the thinking of the classics: by and large, everything that exists in one way or another is beautiful, there are no areas in the world in which the existence of beauty would be impossible. - Destroyed, corrupted, decaying is defined by classical aesthetics as ugly, which in the language of this discipline is equivalent to the ethical term "evil"; Krasnopevtsev's painting carries out the aesthetic and ethical rehabilitation of damaged things. In fact, this painting is driven precisely by ethical pathos. - Krasnopevtsev removes spoiled, flawed things from the sphere of the ugly and evil and returns them to the reality of the beautiful, to where, in reality, everything that exists in the world should be ...
What is a thing? What makes something a thing? For antiquity, the answer to these questions was obvious: a thing makes a thing a form. - Some obvious contour - a border, separation from everything else. And it is the border that introduces a fundamental duality into the self the being of a thing: being part of the world, the thing is opposed to this world. - Things that live in accordance with the laws of ancient ontology are lonely and, therefore, unhappy.
In Krasnopevtsev's aesthetics, form is not the main, stable element that constitutes the being of a thing. - The experience of uselessness, open to any thing, testifies: the form can change, deteriorate, collapse, but - with all this - the thing continues to be a thing. - What really creates the thing as such is the volume. And the interaction of things in the paintings of D.M. Krasnopevtseva - this is exactly volume games.
But what gives volume to the being of a thing? - Diversity and abundance of contents, - volume fills thing content. And in this context, the “uselessness of things” is revealed as tragedy such of things: the thing continues to exist, the thing is filled with content, but at the same time, the thing is not in demand, its content is not needed ...
D. Krasnopevtsev. Still life.
The processes of destruction of things, as a rule, focus attention on the theme of time. - Destruction is an obvious sign of the presence of time in the world. And, at the same time, this is an obvious sign of the fragility and fragility of everything that exists.
But in the painting of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, this traditional connection between time and the destruction of things is absent; the images of this painting are surprisingly ahistorical. - The emblematic character, which is characteristic of them, removes all signs of everyday life from these things, cleanses them of all everyday connotations and, thereby, takes them beyond the limits of time, testifying - unobtrusively and not purposefully - that time also has boundaries.
And the uselessness (destruction) of these things manifests itself as a kind of primordial given; it is not the result of the implementation of a specific event - the event of destruction, rather, here we are dealing with something that was created in this way - in such a state - from the very beginning. - It seems that these things were created unnecessary. “However, doesn’t it matter? - More importantly, something exists exactly, as we see it, exists here and now. What exactly led her to such condition - by and large it does not matter.
However, the notion that things exist here, in relation to the painting of D.M. Krasnopevtseva is very conditional. - Where exactly is this? here? - Freed from the time we are used to, things are simultaneously freed from the space we are used to.
Of course these things exist. somewhere but where exactly? - And it’s not that this question can’t be answered… It’s just that the question itself, in this case, turns out to be meaningless and in some respects vulgar: in the context of this situation about it don't ask...
Any question "where is it?" it involves the questioner himself in a certain game of the relationship of spaces, ties what is being asked about to the topography of what is close and familiar to us. But the things in Krasnopevtsev's paintings are neither close nor far, their topos corresponds not so much with the physical as with the metaphysical dimension, which, however, does not prevent them from existing.
D. Krasnopevtsev. Untitled. 1983.
The emblematic nature of the images characteristic of the artist's style inevitably provokes them symbolic perception; in this perception, emblems are transformed into symbols.
Dmitry Krasnopevtsev. Cross from sprouted knots. 1993.
But if Dmitry Krasnopevtsev's painting is really a symbolic painting, then it shows us symbols with an absolutely open meaning. - These symbols do not need any internal semantic center that sets the direction for their subsequent interpretation. In this regard, there are two possibilities for perceiving the symbolic series present in the artist's painting.
The first of them appeals to the imagination and creative powers of the viewer: everyone who sees the paintings of D.M. Krasnopevtsev, is free to endow them with the meaning that will be consonant with his inner experience. - The viewer becomes a co-author of the picture, and in this painting the possibilities of co-authorship are more real than anywhere else.
The second possibility of perception and interpretation of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev's painting can be realized by refusing to see in these paintings any meaning that goes beyond the specifics of the images. In this case, the symbolic closes in on itself - the symbol of the "unnecessary thing" turns out to be the "unnecessary thing" itself. And this refusal has its own existential truth. - After all, the main thing that an “unnecessary thing” needs is a simple implementation of the original opportunity to be…
One of the most controversial issues concerning the painting of D.M. Krasnopevtsev, is the question of her stylistic qualifications. - Everyone who attempts to attribute this painting to one or another direction or school has obvious difficulties. In my opinion, these difficulties are of an objective nature: Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev does not belong to any school at all. Before us is one of those artists in whose work, not style, but manner, in its original, Renaissance meaning, is of primary importance. And the manner, if it is genuine, is always unique.
And thanks to this quality - the priority of manner over style - D.M. Krasnopevtsev falls out of the “typical reality” of modern painting, for which it is precisely “stylistic” that is decisive. And Krasnopevtsev is rather an “artist from the past”, but we are not talking about the “political past”, measured by symbolic dates, like the date “1917”, - we are talking about a much deeper past, about a past that is extremely close to the very origins of the New European painting. Dmitry Krasnopevtsev is more of an artist of the Proto-Renaissance than of the classical New Age. And such a falling out of one's time - a falling out, most likely, painful, painful for the personality itself - becomes a step into the future, which, however, does not make the fate of the artist less tragic ...
D. Krasnopevtsev. Vase on a leash. 1997.
Rosa Tevosyan,
photo by Igor Palmin
The picture speaks for itself
From conversations with the artist Dmitry Krasnopevtsev
... The seventies of the last century. The apartment is a gallery of the collector G.D. Kostaki. I stop suddenly in front of a small still life that sounds like a lonely revelation. Its author is Dmitry Krasnopevtsev. By the special place that the picture occupies in the general exhibition, one can feel the reverent attitude towards the artist of the owner of the house. But what is it? If this is a painting, then it is completely unusual, never seen before.
Subsequently, I met paintings by Krasnopevtsev at unofficial exhibitions of Moscow artists and each time I stopped spellbound. It is impossible to pass by his works casually, having received information in an instant, as often happens at exhibitions. Krasnopevtsev's spectator does not look at the picture, but contemplates it. It contains an unknown comprehension, a peculiar perception of the metaphysical flow of Time, and something else that attracts to it.
Years went by ... One fine evening, I decided to go to Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, so that he would reveal to me the "secret of creativity", and nothing less! His tiny apartment - workshop was located near the Profsoyuznaya metro station in a wretched house - Khrushcheb. The artist who appeared in the doorway seemed to me a giant. Aristocracy, grace, beauty of appearance were emphasized in communication by simplicity and naturalness that disposed to trust. He showed the still life he was working on at that time, and then the few paintings that were in the studio.
But besides the paintings, the room itself turned out to be a work of art. It was filled with amazing objects: amphoras, glass vessels, candle stubs, pots of cacti, nuts, rosaries, outlandish shells, pebbles, starfish, ancient tomes, dried plants, bizarre roots - it's impossible to list everything. Inspired by the artist, they created an endless variety of compositions of paintings. (A fragment of the room can be seen today at the Museum of Private Collections.) Perhaps, only when you find yourself in the space of this strange room, you begin to understand what are the sources of the incredible spiritual concentration of its inhabitant.
During our conversation, Dmitry Mikhailovich listened, peered into the interlocutor, answering, slowly immersed himself in thoughts, repeated and emphasized individual thoughts, sometimes asked himself a question, and sometimes rejected the question put to him, believing that it was impossible to unambiguously answer it. I think he was constantly answering questions to himself.
“... A work of art is mortal, the material in which it is embodied, be it stone or paper, wood, bronze or canvas, will be destroyed. But the idea itself, the subject of the work, what is reflected and depicted in it, must be above time and change, must be unshakable, eternal, not subject to death and destruction ... ”(D.K.)
Recreating conversations on a tape recording, I tried to convey with maximum accuracy the thoughts of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, turns of his speech, words and intonation. It seems significant to me that, at my request, he said his word about Vladimir Veisberg, the patriarch of the Moscow metaphysical school, the artist with whom he is so often compared.
They were peers, the weather. Weisberg passed away earlier, in 1985, Krasnopevtsev - ten years later.
Now Dmitry Mikhailovich's thoughts have waited in the wings. Will we learn from the reflections of the master presented to the reader the solution to the magic of his painting, or will it forever remain a secret of the subconscious?
About art
Any art - always transformation. Not an image, but a transformation of the visible world, even one's feelings. It begins with the choice of plot and genre and is done involuntarily by the heart and, which is inevitable, by the head. So it was, is and will be with all artists of any direction, any school and anything.
Art is orderly whatever . In whatever society, in whatever state you live, there is also its own order. Not just order, which is called order in any areas of life, there is also an artistic order. It's close, but it's not the same. And artistic order and harmony are one and the same. You can put an equal sign between the one and the other.
About harmony
Art is built on contrasts - straight, crooked, curved, warm, cold, if we talk about color, etc.This is the harmony. Harmony is absent in absolute uniformity. In Japan, a temple was built in which everything is symmetrical, but there is one violation of this symmetry, and this violation creates harmony. There is harmony opposition. In music: minor - major, in color: white - black, red - green. Everything is in contrasts, in opposition, and harmony is only born from it. Otherwise, something tedious and terrible will arise for the eye, and for hearing, and for whatever. I try to build harmony on the correlation of forms, rather on the contrasts of forms, in a word - on the composition. And what can be a composition from one straight line? She needs some contrast. The great artist Delacroix once said that the composition is built in the form of the St. Andrew's Cross. What is St. Andrew's Cross? This is the letter X. Why? Because it contains opposites, they are necessary to build any harmony. And if we look closely, we will see that everything that we like consists of oppositions, from which harmony is born.
About composition
AT the picture is primarily important composition, you can call it a design or architecture. A picture necessarily has its own architecture, and the higher the picture, the more interesting its architecture, or, one might say, its construction. Usually I make small sketches for myself, from which I then move away, sometimes very significantly. Composition rarely occurs immediately. She matures somewhere latent and then suddenly appears by chance.
About the plot
The objects on the canvas themselves do not yet create a plot - I mean a plastic plot. Exactly composition, thought make up my plot, not objects: jugs, stones, shells, driftwood ...
About color
I never had the desire to give up color, although for sculpting the form enough black and white decisions, which I do in many so-called grisaille works. Color helps and deepens, etc. But black and white are also colors. About the graphic artist - engraver, designer, draftsman - sometimes they say: how he feels color! Although there is no color other than black and paper. Color is a subtle concept, it is not always multi-colored and bright.
The color of my paintings is monochrome. Bright colors are not architectonic, not so sculptural. They take on a lot on their own. Monochrome emphasizes the composition of volumes, objects, the construction itself. Color in architecture deconstructs, hides the design of the general. Well, imagine, if we talk about Russian churches, a masterpiece of its kind - the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye. For me, it is more harmonious than St. Basil's Cathedral. Thanks to its variegation, it is less constructive, less architectural, and I am more interested in the design than the decorative beginning.
On the connection between the forms of real life and creativity
Everything happens out of mutual sympathy, as it happens in the whole society, where there is always acceptance and rejection of something. Why are the objects the same or not the same, modern and non-modern? Out-of-date or timeless items are more timeless, they speak less of a short span of time. What is an earthenware jug? I don't know how many millennia people have been making earthenware jars. This is both a need and an eternal form, which, changing, remained unshakable at all times in different countries. The idea of the jug was born soon after the man, and perhaps simultaneously with him. A jug, made both today and in ancient Egypt, carries little information about time, and a tape recorder, a telephone, is our century.
There is, as you know, non-objective art, but objective art is preferable to me. First of all, because of my love for objects, which I used to draw a lot from life. A triangle, a circle, a line, a point are also some kind of objects, harmony can be built on them, but it is personally more convenient and convenient for me to operate with the objective world, since it is easier to express feelings, positions, thoughts through an object. There is a certain preference in my choice of subjects: a certain time should not “climb”, even geography - this does not interest me at all.
About symbols
When creating a work, I think about symbols the least of all. Almost everything is a symbol, perhaps even without almost. This is where associative thinking comes into play: for one, a figure or object will cause one association, for another - another, for a third - a third. The artist must be able to direct and manage. Most often this happens subconsciously. The subconscious is very difficult to put into words, even if you are sincere with yourself and with anyone else. In general, it is very difficult to express fine art in words, and, fortunately, it does not need words.
Symbols are not fixed, they change. There is the symbolism of color, there is even the symbolism of form. Let's take a simple example: mourning colors. We see that in China it is white, we have black and red, somewhere just black. Why black and white? It would seem that there is a contrast, but the traditions and customs of this or that people come into force. Goethe called them negative scale, and the artist would say - neutral colors, neither warm nor cold.
Why is there a green leaf on a broken branch? I don't think about it the least. The leaf may be green, or it may be withered - this is not the salt, but what it is - it is difficult to answer.
If we talk about symbolism, it is very complex. Very often, what seems sad to me, on the contrary, makes others happy. Everyone has their own symbolism, which operates subconsciously.
About ruins and ruin style
There is a beauty of form, but there is also a beauty of uselessness. There is an expression “the abomination of desolation”, but there is also the charm of desolation. The ruin style in architecture is known, there were artists who painted the ruins - Piranesi, Hubert Robert. Truly the poets of the ruins! What are ruins? It is easy to demolish something, and then build and break the lawn. Not! It turns out that the ruins have their own beauty. You can't live in them, they lost their function, but acquired another one - you can think about the transience of time, about dying, about death, etc., but only when the ruins have good architecture. And if the modern house in which we are now sitting is turned into ruins, something ugly will result. The ruins of Coventry or something else, all the Greek architecture, the Parthenon, what is it? These are ruins, but they are beautiful, because there is architecture there, but here it is not.
About music
Music is perhaps the greatest of all arts because it is abstract in nature. Information, as they say now, we get most of all from the eye, from sight, everyone values the eye more than the ear, it is easier for the deaf to live, he can even compose music, there were such examples. But in art it so happened that music turned out to be the most spiritual of all arts ...
About the concept of the artist
How does your concept come about? I dont know. It is born throughout life, literally from everything, is born subconsciously and consciously, with all attachments, by acceptance and rejection, by rejection - and it is so difficult! How can a person say: “Why are you like this and not another?” I am like that.
An artist is not born in the forest and on a desert island. Everything affects us - we look at pictures in books in childhood, and then we start going to museums, monographs. From early youth and still one of my favorite artists is Vincent van Gogh. It seems to be nothing in common, it seems, but it is. Why? I didn't ask myself this question. Everything worked - and some completely unusual personality of the artist, and his brilliant letters, which are as brilliant as his paintings. If you list the artists that I loved and love, you get a very large list, and they all have a latent, sometimes invisible to themselves, and especially to people, influence. An artist who says that he is "on his own" is a lie, or he simply did not understand and did not think much. Everything affects us, absolutely everything.
On understanding with the viewer
I have never had a desire to write large works, and I have nowhere to do them - there is neither a workshop nor a large room. I work in a small room, sitting as usual, and big work requires a retreat. I always assumed that if my work succeeds and someone will say and give something, its place is not on the square, not in a museum, large or small, but in everyday life.
On the consonance of the painting of time
I am often asked why my work is so in tune with the times. I cannot answer this question, absolutely not a word. God forbid that it was some kind of fashion, God forbid! Fashion is very fleeting, however, it is repeated.
Maybe to be... I have a little suspicion: it's very noisy, it's very noisy everywhere, and my desire is to do something quiet. No matter how much a lover of jazz or rock a person is, he sometimes wants to turn everything off and take a break from the noise. I think he strives for peace and quiet just like the author.
The picture speaks for itself . And no matter what the author himself or someone else writes about it, a literary work arises - perhaps very good, and perhaps very bad, but that's all.
Why are my paintings so in tune with the time, why do they fall into time, no matter how you formulate it, I cannot answer this question. I understand very well that my picture can give someone joy, pleasure, but it can also cause a completely negative feeling. I can even imagine such a person. So what? Very well. The relationship of souls is a rather rare phenomenon. Here is the choice. The closer it is, the closer everything is.
About the artist Vladimir Veisberg
It may be the most difficult thing to tell about it, because Volodya Veisberg had some very complex theory of his own, a signal theory, maybe a whole philosophy. He explained it to me, however, he did not really explain it, perhaps he understood that she was not so interesting to me or that I would not understand her, but this is so.
I think - you never know what the artist says - works remain from him! There are artists who write treatises, and there are silent artists. What do we know about Rembrandt? Never mind. Absolutely! He did not leave a single treatise. His letters have been preserved, but they deal with guilders, and not with high matters, which, by the way, is very correct in something. His compatriot Van Gogh wrote in letters about art and everything, but they ended with an appeal to Theo to send him a few francs for life, for canvases, for paints.
And if we go back to Veisberg, then the important thing is not that I heard fragments of the theory from him and did not understand half, it is important that his paintings remained, I saw them both during his lifetime and after. He is a wonderful artist, very harmonious. What else is good about him? He was a hard worker in the best sense of the word, the highest. This is not often, alas, not often. He was the greatest hard worker, a convict in his own way, which always deserves respect and admiration. And how did he achieve harmony? I don't care how! I see the result, and it suits me.
Krasnopevtsev’s early etchings (their entire long, mostly landscape cycle) do not at all seem to be the work of some “other artist” than the later Krasnopevtsev, so well known to us as a master of philosophical still life, whose style we conditionally define as “metaphysical materiality”. In general, this early, but already quite mature period of the artist attracts our special attention already because of its much less fame and study than the subsequent work of the master.
Etching graphics should be considered in the integral context of Krasnopevtsev's creative heritage. After all, there is nothing accidental, transient, spontaneously spontaneous. Let us recall the denial of the very factor of “chance of chance” by the artist himself. Let us also recall the romantic passeism that is especially characteristic of him, the constant presence of the past in the present, the ways of returning “lost time” - this was a characteristic personal feature of Krasnopevtsev (both as a person and as an artist), manifested both in his style of thinking and directly in the creative method. regardless of the change of topics, formal stylistic devices, etc.
He was distinguished by the ability to stay in many temporary environments at once. This is confirmed by the literary and philosophical notes of the artist. Well, he was very critical of the vain attempts of other artists to be “modern” at all costs, as well as the tendency of art critics to classify everything rigidly, put it on shelves, label it. 
The cycle of etchings is already something more than an introduction or prelude to Krasnopevtsev's later work. This is a completely mature independent stage in the path of a master in art, based on the skills of craftsmanship and a fair amount of knowledge of the material obtained by the young artist during his apprenticeship with the magnificent etching master M.A. Dobrova. On his role in the fate of Krasnopevtsev, we should dwell especially.
Through apprenticeship with M.A. Dobrov, through his very creative personality, the broken connection of times was restored, a living continuity was carried out between different artistic generations. He passed on to his students the skills and secrets of that spiritualized craft, which was etching. Classes with such a specific type of easel graphics, both for the teacher and for his students, were of fundamental importance. The performing traditions of etching graphics were kept by only a few enthusiasts, in particular Dobrov personally, who was, on the one hand, the heir, keeper and continuer of the high culture of the former pre-revolutionary Russia (as an artist and as a person, he was formed during the Silver Age and passed on its traditions to his students) , on the other hand, he was the bearer of the artistic culture of the West, which was just as closed to the young artistic generation in the 1940s and 1950s. Recall that in his youth, Dobrov studied in Paris with the largest master of etching and engraving in general, E. Krutikova, and organically entered the then Parisian environment. 
It is also important for us that Dobrov considered Krasnopevtsev one of his best students, appreciating his early professional maturity, special talent and penchant for etching, as evidenced, in particular, by Dobrov’s preserved letter to the Moscow Union of Artists, where he recommends his student to the workshop another outstanding master of etching - I. Nivinsky.
The graphics of the early Krasnopevtsev are soundly, professionally executed in the classical etching technique in the best traditions of the graphics of the "museum" Old European masters. Outwardly, all the rules of the landscape genre and fine realism are observed here, the signs of attentive natural studies are recognized, the skills of sketches, sketches from nature, etc. are palpable. preparatory material. All this as a whole is depicted in compliance with the external rules of classical realism: the rules of linear, and sometimes aerial perspective, as well as the laws of light and shade modeling of form, and the images of landscapes without any deliberate deformations and displacements appear quite authentically in their earthly, solidly constructed spaces. But all this is only one side of the coin, and, perhaps, the most important, basic, essential is hidden just on its less obvious other side. 
The realism observed here is somewhat deceptive, it is interesting in many respects from the point of view of the “resistance of the material”, it must be gradually overcome, replayed, reshaped, but from within itself, without giving up its expressive and plastic possibilities. After all, in essence and in its purpose, everything here is so clearly distinguishable, accurately conveyed, easily recognizable landscape motifs of the City and Nature, in general, all the realities of the surrounding world - this is just a help for the artist, service material and a conditional device when he builds a completely separate self-valuable world of his own. personal "possessions".
According to the views of Krasnopevtsev himself, all reality, all this so-called “life” is only a supplier of “raw materials for art”, and the artist, apparently, was committed to this from his youth. Credo(“Life is real. Art is not real... Art is not a mirror... but a complex system of prisms and mirrors.” Dm. Krasnopevtsev).
Very significant and indicative here is the fact that the work itself - the composition embodied in the engraving, from beginning to end is created already in isolation from raw nature, regardless of anything visible directly before the eyes. The landscape is seen from a temporal, and not only from a spatial distance. In essence, these landscape motifs - houses, streets, yards, trees, etc. - for all their "naturalness" are fantastic. 
The genre itself is most likely free fantasy on landscape themes, which, perhaps, are composed, composed, developed in accordance with the principles of musical composition, or, perhaps more correctly, like rhetorical figures, “tropes” (metaphors, etc.). etc.) of a poetic text, with a combination of exact discipline (rhythm and meter) inherent in poetry with the freedom of fiction, the play of uncontrolled associations. In short, this is the re-creation of reality, which does not obey the tasks and rules of "life reflection" (after all, the worst of dogmas is the dogma of "fact").
So, Krasnopevtsev's landscapes do not at all hide their composition, fiction, their noble "artificiality". But this should not at all be understood necessarily in the spirit of “avant-garde” arbitrariness... The artist neither then nor after did not feel any need for modernist extremes, although at the same time he is quite modern in his own way. Knowing the taste for abstraction and the will for the omnipotence of the imagination, it was far from accidental that he did not fit into the art of "official" with its social realism, although in the underground of unofficial art Krasnopevtsev retained the independence of the principled "outside" - the status of high loneliness. This is a much more subtle way of "internal emigration" than the politicized fuss of the infringed and suppressed "nonconformists" willy-nilly.
The artist's appeal to small scales, even emphatically miniature formats of graphic landscape compositions, is by no means an accident and not a consequence of some external forced restrictions. Perhaps, at this stage, this is a principle: the images, which are small in themselves, are also marked by the artist’s attention to even the smallest details, if they are expressive, significant and work for the general image of such a micro-landscape - all this is programmatic for the considered range of Krasnopevtsev’s works (and in general for his graphic heritage). Such a small landscape with its non-random trifles actually gravitates towards immensity, becomes a "small world", a "microcosm", self-sufficient, but at the same time reflecting the universe as a whole in its own way. Heaven, earth, the horizon between them, buildings are signs of the human world; trees, water, stones - signs of the natural environment - this is what extends between Heaven and Earth, this is the area of \u200b\u200bour "being here". 
Hence the often occurring effect of a free escape from everyday life with the help of seemingly the most unpretentious pictorial motifs - these guiding clues from the Landscape to those who make their imaginary journey in it. And only its creator, the Master himself, has the true right to do so. For all outsiders, even those who understand, these seemingly familiar territories depicted are reserved.
Their enchanting "special reality" gravitates towards the purifying stage of complete Desolateness - to the ideal of that sublime loneliness that the artist himself cultivated, therefore the landscape both opens up the openness of space and appears hidden, like a shell sash. Like the very Nature of Being, which, according to the pre-Socratic philosophers, "being hidden, hiding is revealed."
Nature in its most profound and ancient understanding is a speaking cryptogram. But her speech often sounds like Silence. And human products find harmony only in accordance with this universal Nature. In the Art in question, chiaroscuro itself, both obscuring and highlighting, is similar to the basis of being at the same time dark and translucent. And the ratio of voids and objectivity in the space of the sheet is like the alternations of prophetic silence and the generosity of the generation of forms in the cosmic whole. And this is the law for Great Art too! The foregoing does not contradict the above theses of the artist about the superiority of Art over life and about the contraindication for art to mirror nature.
Art itself is also a kind of Nature (or Reality), but this is its highest elitist-chosen level, as different from other nature as a flower or a star is different from the black soil, like a genius from a little man of the crowd. At first glance, the simplest realities: a house, a barn, a fence, a tree, etc. behave like guardians of some already inaccessible to direct sight, inaccessible and mysterious space. They seem to guard the innermost core of the enchanted landscape. Art critics are sometimes tempted to say that Krasnopevtsev's things are like portraits of living people. May be. But these portraits are hardly human. Portraits of “simple” objects are essentially no less fantastic than those of Arcimboldo. Each house here has its own face, trees sometimes seem to gesticulate, show their personality and character, which can be revealed through their objective appearance. 
At the same time, the rapprochement of the master with the heights of the art of the past also undeniably happened. Thus, the engravings of small forms that we are considering are likened in their self-organization to a classical museum painting, which, after all, was also composed in its heyday, assembled on the basis of preliminary field studies, was also created “by imagination” in the sublime seclusion of the workshop - at a distance from the hustle and bustle of life, from the noise of the streets and away from the “raw” simple nature (which was then so loved by the Impressionists and other plein-air “sketches” with their out-of-town trips to catch “impressions”).
However, this is precisely how one of the greatest “teachers from the Past” for our artist (more precisely, his inspiration from the depths of time) Rembrandt, for example, in his famous etching “Three Trees”, when his purely landscape motif on a small sheet acquired almost cosmic sound, aggravated by the realistic mysticism of luminous chiaroscuro (which, by the way, was willingly and obviously inherited by Krasnopevtsev precisely as an "etcher"). 
This great, truly lofty Tradition also helped our artist to do without any superfluous speculative figurative effects, i.e., without pumping up any impressive plot that hits the nerves or emotions, which was the sin of so many of the artist’s contemporaries, his colleagues in the then creative underground, especially constant exhibitors of the basement hall at Malaya Gruzinka - that was then the only art outlet, where, however, Krasnopevtsev himself had a chance to exhibit more than once as an unofficially recognized "classic" of domestic independent art. Krasnopevtsev, being isolated and independent both socially and purely aesthetically, initially avoided any bad “literary” and “pseudo-profound thinking”. True, in his art, of course, there is a place for selected literary reminiscences, which are very significant for Krasnopevtsev with his personal cult of the Book, an aesthete-“scribe”, partly a collector, but by nature a contemplator, connoisseur, who in an enlightened hermitage succeeded in this kind of "art of life".
But at the same time (which is important) he never needed any concrete illustrativeness of direct references to one or another (even from the most beloved) literary work, much less any cumbersome allegories that allow their “line by line” reading by someone outsiders. The ability to protect and protect one's inner world - the sacred territory of the Outside - was rarely developed and is so tangible in the work and in Krasnopevtsev's personal behavior. 
Hence the effect of mystery, opacity, semantic inexhaustibility, which occurs even, it would seem, in the simplest, uncomplicated pictorial motifs, including in the landscapes we are currently considering, outwardly much less complicated and symbolically loaded than still lifes. Here, too, a secret Something is hidden, categorically untranslatable into the language of words and concepts. Already in the early etchings, the paths of small landscapes anticipate the paths of the metaphorical poetics of the subsequent later mate-still lifes. Here, gradually, the intonations inherent in the actual still life poetics have already been outlined. still Leben(quiet life), cultivated by Krasnopevtsev in the future. Dissonance is seen in the most rigid division of the artist's heritage into periods. In the transition from one to another, there is no discord, break, break. The inner continuity is perceptible - the subtle connection of everything with everything - everything is internally necessary, irrevocable, like Fate itself! 
So, in landscapes (especially urban ones), the theme of the uncertainty of the borderland itself - inanimate and animated, dead and alive, has already been clearly outlined, that is, here the poetics of melancholy that has prevailed later in the still life, consonant with such a genre of art of the old masters as Vanitas or Momente mori. In general, the apotheosis nature morte, i.e. literally “dead nature”, both intricate, unpretentious motifs of small etching landscapes and compositions of “complex” imaginary still lifes, invariably associated with the name of Krasnopevtsev, are noted in equal measure. Natural observation or “impression”, being already passed through the “filter” of dismissive recall, is additionally corrected and removed by the work of an inquisitive fantasy, by the magic of the all-powerful imagination. However, fiction here is clearly on friendly terms with the analytical precision of almost mathematical Reason. The latter is just especially in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, so beloved by the artist, his constant companion from the Past. 
Returning to the beginning of the still life in the landscape, we note that here, in the manner of a “still life”, even images and forms of obviously living nature are interpreted. Even the human figures that appear in these landscapes only emphasize the majestic, absolute immobility of their surroundings. And what about the environment? After all, houses or stones, trees here, perhaps, are the true actors of the composition. But their mode of action is external inaction, silence, immobility. External eventlessness marks the secret of true Events, the main of which is the transformation of the inanimate into the living, and life into art. Embodied in houses or even flawed sheds and shacks, the images of the Place, or, perhaps, the secret Spirits of the locality, frozen forever, actually balance on the fine line between piercingly nostalgic Remembrance and prophetic Foresight. Here the living conquers death precisely when the living outwardly died. Here, even plants most often and most clearly express their essence and demonstrate the sophistication of their honed form, appearing withered and stripped in autumn or completely withered and thereby related to the nature of stones - this “kind of Nature” especially beloved by the artist. Even the foliage here is also especially dry, as if burned from the inside or seems to be some kind of artificial lace. 
Such is the lot of inanimate but living Nature here. The Flesh and Become of a tree and a bush become especially majestic and significant when these creatures of the earth became like inorganic nature: regardless of whether they were struck by the wind of the North or shrunken, scorched by the hot sun of the South, these growths of the landscape turned into nature morte forever frozen breathless. In their stone-likeness, they joined through their physical death to Immortality, to Eternity. It is in such post-mortem states that plants begin to reveal the essence of their existential secrets and express the beauty of the pure form of their trivial vegetative existence. The waters here are most beautiful when, impassively frozen, like ice, they stretch with a neutral-mirror surface, capable of reflecting the displaced shapes and reflections of the surrounding reality, or, perhaps, the whiteness of misty clouds - the contents of an empty sky... 
More often they are just pure mirrors of the landscape, receptacles of objectless-silvery light as such, repositories of majestic emptiness, oases of clear peace, symbols of enlightened Silence...
Let us note, summing up, that the masculine principle of the “Kingdom of the Stone”, like the smooth surface of motionless cold waters, all this clearly dominates the mundane femininity of plants (i.e., vegetative nature). Perhaps the "inanimate" and artificial here turns out to be the most valuable and the most "alive", being a special privileged form of life, reincarnated into the otherness of the artistic image. The landscape sheet is no longer just a window to a realistically plausible world, but also not a door, because it will not let outsiders in, and not a mirror that can only passively reflect the borrowed images of reality, and thus Hoffmann's magical multi-mirror kaleidoscope, outwardly not violating, however, the effect of optical reliability of everything refracting them. And through such a magical, “mirror” in fact “reflection of reality”, you can leave or fly very far, which, however, is fully possible only for the rightful owner of the miracle kaleidoscope (or even its creator, designer, as which one can perceive himself Master - the artist with his special gift of "foreboding"). 
On the whole, the special relationship between what is called “natural” and “artificial” in general is interesting. After all, their dichotomy is rethought and overcome here no less original than the already considered dialogue and metamorphoses of the Living and the Dead (in the context of nature morte, as a form of art and its cross-cutting themes, these, apparently, eternal themes!). The High Artificiality of Art, which, for example, was so highly valued by C. Baudelaire, O. Wilde and, of course, E.A. Po is undoubtedly placed above any “mere life” there, which (let us repeat this after the artist again) is “only the raw material for art”. In the landscape, the superiority of the motives of the City over observations gleaned from Nature is obvious. Here, for example, houses-buildings have become the semantic centers of the compositions, even their characters, which, undoubtedly, most magnetize our attention: buildings, if not more alive, then more significant and meaningful than all living things. 
They are undoubtedly a purely artificial work of architecture. However, more often they are uncomplicated products of urban development, not standing out in themselves by any special architectural merits. So, they are obviously out of nature, being the product of human hands, although the person who once built them is most often of little interest to us, because (as already mentioned) the architecture depicted here is not always a product of creativity. Sometimes it has no independent value, not being a work of art in itself. Depicted graphically and transformed by fantasy, these “character” houses are sometimes completely ugly buildings and, however, are capable of attracting the portrait painter precisely with their grotesque expression. 
Thus, the main pictorial motifs of these etching sheets are obviously artificial in origin, moreover, more often uninhabited, uninhabited, and they themselves are already half-dead, captured, as it were, on the deathbed of buildings (buildings of the city and suburbs). But it is they who turn out to be the most alive, because they are vital for art and for the artist, sometimes appearing not only as the most essential in nature, but even as a kind of real-fantastic creatures. Occasionally, views of a purely non-urban, pure, virgin nature appear here, and just in such ascetic-hard landscapes, which are beloved by the artist, dominated by stone rocks, mountain canyons, etc. along with the more often dry vegetation of a certain harsh South (the prototypes are the motifs of the beloved “harsh” Crimea; Sudak, etc. - areas in which, in the artist’s interpretation, however, something “Spanish” begins to emerge) - just in such 
In landscape fantasies closest to nature, a special, in its own way “pictorial” convention arises to a much greater extent than in urban motifs. Here, the majestic landscape fantasies of the old museum masters (Salvator Rosa, Piranese, Mantegna and others) are even more clearly recalled, there is even more frank fiction, illusory, unreality, even sometimes not without a hint of “theatricality” (by no means, of course, not in the worst sense of the word) . But at the same time, the very boundaries of the real, the possible, the generally accessible are decisively crossed here. Reality begins to float, shifting in transforming reflections. This is how it works again and again - the Japanese mirror kaleidoscope recalled by the artist, the magical “mirror”, which is able to shift and mix in itself all the mirror “realistic” refractions of visible reality, comes into force - that wonderful piece of glass, the sacred “toy”, which the visionary fantasy of the artist in his notes gave one of his friends from the Past - E.T.A. Hoffmann.
The laces of dreams about something else are absorbed, the images of realities are absorbed, they are caught by the openwork retina of etching shading. This network transforms and regenerates its catch (the trophies of contemplative observations, the skills of field sketches and sketches, the experience of drawing from nature, the ashes of the experienced, etc.), turning all this into a wonderful second “nature” - “beauty No. 2” (see diary artist's notes). 
There is also a kind of “island” effect - a feeling of a separate, protected, self-sufficient “island” (or a small world in itself), but the artist also shows through, crystallizes and generalizes a collective image of a certain area-landscape, a city of dreams. The old and eternal truth “the great in the small” or the wisdom of William Blake comes to mind: “To see Eternity in every grain of sand”.
A small area on a small-format sheet of engraving, a seemingly limited area - a micro-landscape - turns out to be essentially limitless, inexhaustible. Inexhaustible discoveries become possible within the modest chamber limits of an imaginary city or suburban “walk”, as at the bottom of that Crimean ravine with white stones, in which the artist, according to his notes, was able to complete his “tour around the world”. The very problem of overcoming the local specifics of Time and place (their restrictive conditions) is very significant and indicative.
Note that, in fact, many landscape etchings are based on very real observations of the environment. So, there are recognizable motifs of old Moscow - the courtyards and alleys of Ostozhenka (Krasnopevtsev's former and only favorite place of residence), there are motifs of suburban areas (the Arkhangelskoye estate was already his graduation work), there are sheets sent to Kuskovo, Ostankino, Murom, Vladimir, Khabarovsk, Odessa, Sudak, Irkutsk and other cities. 
Finally, from a formal point of view, the already obviously imaginary historical landscapes of cities sound apart, but at the same time in spirit and style, quite in unison with other sheets of the cycle. There are images of the cities of the old West, of that former Europe, which, alas, no longer exists (after all, turning into a museum for tourists is not real life!). This is the bygone Europe that we, Russians, are able to love and appreciate more than the current weary-fed Europeans themselves. We see historical or almost visionary images of an old western city. Such are the streets of the Middle Ages and the “City of the Plague” (of course, not without a reference to the unforgettable Edgar Allan Poe with his famous short story), where the gloom of the plot does not reduce the poetic aura of urban antiquity, but, on the contrary, only exacerbates the drama and beauty of landscape sound. Such are the motives of old Paris of the era of the beloved Musketeers - in such romantic-historical pictorial fantasies in terms of subject matter (and partly even in style) Krasnopevtsev sometimes approaches his old friend, also a romantic “Westernizer”, a famous master of book illustrations and unknown as “works for himself "Ivan Kuskov, this recluse," scribe "who consistently embodied his dream of the Past - of the past, already impossible West, purely in Russian, exclusively subjectively, as his personal property-possession, although, unlike the latter, Krasnopevtsev avoids any illustrative . How different such disinterested Westernism or, more precisely, retro-Europeanism is from the predatory and soulless pragmatism of that “Westernism” that is now being aggressively implanted from outside (from across the ocean) and “from above”.
So Krasnopevtsev's inclinations are still masters of still life par excellence- The Seer's Thing (in its materiality and connection with eternity) is already fully anticipated and in its own way embodied in his landscape etchings. This was especially evident in urban, urban or suburban-outlying motifs, where one can guess carefully staged subject mise-en-scènes, which are destined to play out in the future in the magical theater of prophetic things. 
The gaze moves, wanders among these old walls and buildings (graphically fixing their "picturesque" shabby), the gaze moves from the proscenium, from the "foreground", into the depths, the thought explores the area, before being embodied in the image, it stops to taste “a sip of eternity”, and again traces the pace of change, comparing the plasticity of clearly readable forms, revealing in the form an image, and sometimes in it a prototype of some authentically fantastic “Creature”.
So, we have come to the main feature of that not even a genre, but rather a cult of a kind of dead, but strangely reviving nature in the art of Krasnopevtsev, now no longer doubting the presence nature morte in the landscape cycle of the Master. And here it is important not to make a mistake in accents. So, it would be a mistake to see here some kind of allegorical narrative - a story, a fable or a parable. It is fundamentally excluded, perhaps in its own way fascinating and sympathetic, but deeply alien to our artist, the humanization of inanimate objects (in the spirit, for example, of some famous Andersen's fairy tales). There is no place at all for this kind of still too sentimental-spiritual (rather than metaphysical-spiritual), “too human” subtexts. 
The artist avoids projections onto the world of inanimate things of all sorts of interpersonal relations or excessively emotional experiences, he never has an entertaining plot of some “history” from the life of everyday objects with its plot, accessible to retelling into the language of ordinary profane speech. And there are no parallels to the everyday situations of the “average” person. As for our artist, he was able once and for all to establish a protective distance between himself and the external “modern world”, reliably maintaining his vicious but inexhaustible circle, “the world in itself”, from any extraneous intrusions and excessive influences from outside.
The aesthetic and philosophical outlook of the Master was formed quite early and in general, developing and deepening, retained its constancy and even, perhaps, invariability. There are no allegorical or, perhaps, “occult” ciphers that can (with the necessary erudition) be unraveled and “read” like a rebus. It is useless to look in the combination of objects and symbols for any complexes (in the spirit of Freudian “psychoanalysis”) or any allegorical allegory on the topic of worldly morality or, for example, religious dogma. In short, there is no place at all for any kind of literary information that is essentially extraneous to art (with its own Mysticism), external to it (although the game of associations and excessively rampant fantasy can push the viewer to these false interpretations of the riddle of objectivity by Krasnopevtsev). ). 
At the same time, between things (be it houses, trees, stones of landscapes, or the thing itself - in still lifes) something really happens. They even have some “personal” relationships that are incomprehensible to us (and should not be understood!) - subtle sympathetic connections, contacts, attraction and repulsion, etc. Here, in fact, this or that object is no longer just a formed substance, but rather a Being. But this kind of Being must remain mysteriously inexplicable in its essence. After all, the most essential, curious and valuable in him is not what brings him closer to the world and the human race, but quite the opposite - exactly what distinguishes him from the breed of "thinking bipeds." In short, the subject here undeniably becomes a kind of “character” or the main “protagonist” of the composition. And he is more expressive precisely because of his extrahumanity and, perhaps, even superhumanity. And the house, and the bush, and the tree, and the stone - all this every time is a new “magic creature”, it is always hidden, as if under a mask, the appearance, or rather, the image of some very special strange “nature-breed”. 
This kind of “creature” is partly akin to that spirit of madness, doom, sadness and decay, which directly through the masonry and structure of the building permeated the entire Usher Castle, and along the way struck all its inhabitants (after all, in the center of the famous story of Edgar Allan Poe - fate is precisely the House of Usher itself, not only in the generic, genealogical, but also in the literal-architectural sense). True, nevertheless, in most engravings-landscapes of Krasnopevtsev, much more enlightened, at least not so destructive and aggressive forces are palpable. They are not necessarily hostile to man (like the spirit of the House of Usher), but no less mysterious and magnetic. Note that the Master's worldview as a whole is too harmonious to directly depict and express purely negative, destructive and malevolent entities and beings. He loves the terrible, but he always finds control over it, primarily through the “frame” of a sophisticated style and the beautiful clarity of plastic form. Summarizing the above, one can resort to a guess, apparently not without foundation and not far from the truth. The guess is this: is there not some common breed of spiritual beings or Essences appearing here. In all these old houses, looking at us with gaps, cracks, crevices of their empty, dark, like loopholes “eye sockets” through the visor and masks of their spectacularly flawed facades and walls, as well as in the skeletal-graceful “corporeality” of openwork trees and fences, in the “sculptures” of roadside stones and rocks, in the secret matter of frozen waters, as well as in the very anatomy of the city as a whole with the branches of its tendons and capillaries - alleys, lanes, streets and other landscape paths - the presence of a certain common, unifying cross-cutting theme is felt everywhere and maybe even - the omnipresent secret power. Still, we dare to name it. Apparently, all these are various metaphysical incarnations or personifications of that otherwise indescribable Deity, which from ancient times was called Genius Loci(the genius of the Place, or the spirit of the Place). 
But in this case, we are not talking about the features and signs of any local, separately taken area or territory. Cities, their outskirts and natural motifs from Krasnopevtsev's engravings, even if endowed, inspired by quite certain walks, travels or simply places of residence, are still not put on a geomap. They belong to a special "geography" of artistic imagination. But even if these landscapes, as we are more and more convinced, are akin to the hidden "city of dreams", then it is not only endowed with a peculiar logic of its structure, but also with the lively character of the wayward Genius Loci. Recall that the latter is not inclined to reveal himself directly, preferring the guiding hints of poetic, or (as in this case) plastic, metamorphoses. But at the same time, he is almost never embodied and can not be depicted in any concretization, especially in human form. 
Therefore, the subject symbols of landscapes, whose “dead nature” is enchanted by the power of the ever-living and wise art, are precisely the ideal metaphorical key to the heart of the mysterious Genius Loci, this is the most consonant response to his call. The image of the spirit of the Place, its extrahuman face is always either eerie or affably addressed to a person (ready for contact with him) - especially - to a chosen person, capable of creative contemplation. What Dmitry Krasnopevtsev was in full measure both as a Personality and as an artist, which, however, is completely inseparable here.
art critic Sergey Kuskov
- (1925 94) Russian artist, representative of unofficial art. The creator of his own, special type of metaphysical still life: small, usually monochrome paintings depicting cracked jugs, dry flowers, shells, and other remains ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
- (b. 1925), Russian painter. In a lapidary generalized manner, he paints “metaphysical” still lifes, paradoxical sets of “scrap”, obsolete things, reminiscent of the frailty and eternity of being at the same time (“Five broken jugs”, ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Genus. 1925, mind. 1994. Painter, representative of the Soviet "unofficial art". The author of the so-called. "metaphysical still lifes" 60-70s. Works: "Fanza in winter", "House in a wasteland", "Dead ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia
Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Mikhailovich Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (June 2, 1925, Moscow February 28, 1995, ibid.) Russian artist, representative of "unofficial" art. Contents 1 Biography ... Wikipedia
Mikhailovich Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (June 2, 1925, Moscow February 28, 1995, ibid.) Russian artist, representative of "unofficial" art. Contents 1 Biography ... Wikipedia
Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Mikhailovich Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (June 2, 1925, Moscow February 28, 1995, ibid.) Russian artist, representative of "unofficial" art. Contents 1 Biography ... Wikipedia
Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Mikhailovich Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (June 2, 1925, Moscow February 28, 1995, ibid.) Russian artist, representative of "unofficial" art. Contents 1 Biography ... Wikipedia
Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Mikhailovich Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (June 2, 1925, Moscow February 28, 1995, ibid.) Russian artist, representative of "unofficial" art. Contents 1 Biography ... Wikipedia
Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Mikhailovich (1925 1995) Soviet avant-garde artist Krasnopevtsev, Lev Nikolaevich (born 1930) Soviet historian, dissident Krasnopevtsev, Semyon Alexandrovich (1896 1954) Soviet military leader, colonel general of artillery ... ... Wikipedia
Krasnopevtsev Dmitry Mikhailovich
Hall "Workshop of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev"
Lidia Pavlovna Krasnopevtseva (1925-1999) - wife, faithful friend and companion of the artist Dmitry Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (1925-1995), donated about 700 items to the Museum of personal collections. She met Dmitry Krasnopevtsev while still a schoolgirl, they sat on the same desk, and then for many years Lidia Pavlovna carefully protected Dmitry Mikhailovich from the hardships of everyday life. After the death of the artist in 1995, thanks to the efforts of Lidia Pavlovna Krasnopevtseva, the workshop - not all, but in a significant amount - was transferred to the Museum of Private Collections, where an exposition was placed in a separate room, combining drawings, etchings, paintings by Krasnopevtsev and a complex of items from the workshop. The work of Dmitry Mikhailovich, a representative of the generation of the “sixties”, occupies a significant place in the history of Russian art in the second half of the twentieth century. His still lifes most often depicted objects from the artist's whimsical collection. Placing a significant part of the workshop in the Museum allows the viewer to "look behind the scenes" of the artist's creative laboratory.
The Krasnopevtsev collection was assembled according to the principle “everything worthy of note for some reason”, like the cabinets of curiosities of Peter the Great, where you can see curiosities of natural origin and works of art in one row. Antique vessels, an excellent icon of the 16th century, coexisted on equal terms in the workshop. Saved by a wet beard, silver-plated shandal, rusty ship's chain, tree mulberry mushroom. Suffice it to say that more than 10 sections had to be introduced for the museum inventory of the “Dmitry Krasnopevtsev Workshop” complex of objects: works of decorative art and small plastic arts (among which there are works of museum value - hanging inkwells of the 18th century), archaeological and geological antiquities, stones, shells, anthropological material, dried plants, minerals. Everyone - art historians, friends, acquaintances who visited this workshop at least once during the artist's lifetime - notes that this collection of antiquities and rarities served for him as a kind of cave, refuge. Undoubtedly, there was something in it from a child's game, a Dickensian antiquities shop - in an ordinary apartment in a block house in Novye Cheryomushki, a door to another world, built according to special laws, was hidden.
In the notes that Krasnopevtsev kept over the past decades, there are several that clarify the artist’s attitude to the items in the collection: “In the booth shiner’s booth, a chipped, dirty mother-of-pearl shell hangs on a copper-black chain – an ashtray full of cigarette butts – desecrated, desecrated beauty. He asked to sell in order to wash, cleanse, consecrate - but received a decisive refusal. The desire to transfer the object to the workshop meant for Krasnopevtsev to save, to consecrate the object. “Beauty is harmony, order, silence,” he repeated. Most of all, this silence, he believed, corresponded to stones: "Agate is a miracle of harmony and beauty." The objects of the workshop did not immediately become the heroes of painting, this was preceded by several stages of their creative transformation. The first stage was a small sketch, finding an accurate and at the same time generalized image. Sometimes such several "plastic formulas" were combined into one common composition. Composition 1 (1960-1980). Then the found combination of objects in the drawings became the basis of paintings, mainly still lifes.
“Krasnopevtsev is a master of still life. In his understanding, this is the mastery of the language of things. And even more broadly - mastering the language of nature. This is the mastery of reality, the subordination of it to oneself. Therefore, two poles are always distinguishable in his works: Nature (realized in things) and the Artist, the one who realizes these things themselves into a certain community of a higher order, ”wrote art critic and friend of the artist Rostislav Klimov. These searches for the hidden meaning of being, eluding rational comprehension, bring the artist closer to the circle of surrealist problems. By the way, the poet and theorist of surrealism, Andre Breton was known for his love of stones.
One of the most frequently encountered motifs in the artist’s work is both in his drawings and in paintings: three trees, or three vertical stones located on the top of a mountain, are undoubtedly an allusion to the scene of the crucifixion of Christ and two robbers. In late work Cross (Golgotha). (1993) this metaphor becomes completely transparent.
After the death of the artist, the magic of his workshop became especially evident. It was terrible to think about the destruction of its integrity - not only because this refuge of the artist was perceived as a creation, such a gigantic installation created over decades, but as something that contains the key to his mysterious works. The leadership of the Pushkin Museum decided to experiment. As a result of the creative cooperation of Lydia Pavlovna Krasnopevtseva, director of the Pushkin Museum I.A. Antonova and the chief artist of the Museum D.K. Bernshtein, in the small hall of the Department of Private Collections, there are scrupulously recreated fragments of the workshop - a wardrobe, a desk, an easel with an unfinished still life - and paintings by Krasnopevtsev. In addition, the exhibition includes photographs by Igor Palmin, a photographer who was friends with the Krasnopevtsevs and often visited them. A photographic portrait of Krasnopevtsev, as well as a series of photographs of the artist's studio, is a gift from the author to the Museum of Private Collections. This unique exposition has a memorial character, but at the same time it gives an opportunity to trace the development of the artist's creative imagination.
