Exhibition of Works by Theatre Artist Boris Messerer
Organized by the Russian Academy of Arts to mark the 75th anniversary of the celebrated theatre designer, People’s Artist of Russia, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Arts, winner of Russian State Prizes Boris Messerer, the exhibition features over 100 works by the master including his models, sketches for sets and costumes for operas, ballets and plays.
The artist’s name is well-known in Russia and many countries. In his creative work of more than 50 years representing a synthesis of several arts, the most significant is his ability to do stage sets figuratively and functionally. In his settings lives a phenomenon of theatrical effectiveness: they are structural, plastic, decorative, and contain an unexpected explosive charge of dynamics. Messerer possesses a rare gift, a magic of transforming ordinary things into theatrical images, finds unexpected three-dimensional and spatial correlations.
In the master’s theatre designs is seen an interaction of theatre and architecture, easel painting and graphics, design and installation, the unification and contrasting of which contributes to a permanent enrichment of his artistic language.
Boris Messerer has produced scenography for over 150 operas, ballet and drama performances staged in Moscow best theatres - the Bolshoi Theatre, Sovremennik, Vakhtangov, Mayakovski, Pushkin drama theatres, Mossoviet theatre, Malaya Bronnaya theatre, in Mariinski Opera and Ballet Theatre in St. Petersburg, as well as in opera theatres in Tbilisi, Erevan and others. From 1990 to 1997 Boris Messerer was a chief artist of A. Chekhov Moscow Art Academic Theatre. He has worked together with many prominent choreographers, stage directors, among them are Oleg Efremov, Marc Zakharov, Alicia Alonso, Eugene Simonov, Vakhtang Chabukiani, Anatoli Efros, Sergei Yutkevitch, etc.
Messerer’s artistic intuition and freedom of imagination have been brilliantly revealed in his paintings and graphic works including color lithographs with extraordinary characters or abstract compositions full of amazing harmony of contrasting objects.
Messerer has made brilliant book illustrations and designs for TV films, worked as an artist for animated cartoons and a designer of over 30 prestigious exhibitions in A. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, State History Museum, etc.
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