STRANGERS: SOLO EXHIBITION OF ANDREY ESIONOV IN VENICE
Dates: September 13 – December 1, 2024
Venue: Halls of the Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation (71/C Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy). Admission is free.
The press-conference: September 12, 2024
SEE IMAGES OF WORKS IN THE RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE SITE
The Russian artist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, Honorary Academician of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence Andrey Esionov presents the debut of his “Strangers” solo exhibition in Venice. The artist has timed his solo show to coincide with the period of the 60th Venice Biennale. “Being today amidst what is called contemporary art, I feel like I belong among strangers. The exhibition of my works has been entitled by the word uniting human contradictions. Relatives in the same family can become strangers, friends become strangers, people with a different mentality or culture can seem like strangers… I have selected paintings having a free reading of the concept of “strangers” – works that are rather filled with positivity and offer to think…”, – notes Andrey Esionov.
The curators of the exhibition, that features the artist’s 70 canvases are the writer, poet and journalist Tahar Ben Jelloun and the Italian historian, publicist and journalist Giordano Bruno Guerri. The peculiar exposition resembling the outlines of the Noah’s Ark invites the viewer for a journey and has been conceived to “save the true art fr om the flood” both in philosophical and figurative senses, as in autumn the water level in the Piazza San Marco usually rises. Organized under the auspices of the “Bevilacqua la Masa” Foundation it is a good opportunity to discover the art of the talented master of contemporary Russian art, author of the post-Soviet visionary neorealism. The exhibition in Venice is the third one in the cycle of solo shows of Andrey Esionov in Italy after Florence and Rome.
The artist’s favorite technique is watercolor on paper. Andrey Esionov rethinks the old technique in an innovative way entering into a dialogue with the academic tradition. He used his unique art language to capture elusive monuments of life, to create images that are between the realistic perception and other visions of the world.
He draws inspiration fr om the history of Russia, fr om his travels around Europe, from epochal changes and political upheavals in the former Soviet Union that he has experienced: passers-by, street artists, children and animals are the main characters of his paintings. Andrey Esionov is also known as an author of a vast series of portraits of celebrated representatives of culture and science including the spaceman Alexey Leonov, writer Vladimir Voinovich, film makers Vladimir Naumov and Eldar Ryazanov, World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov, the USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and others.
The writer, poet and journalist, the exhibition curator Tahar Ben Jelloun says about Andrey Esionov’s work: “He is an artist of rare talent. His originality and uniqueness are obvious and manifest themselves in several styles and approaches… Esionov’s watercolors usually depict or rather tell us about objects or people taken by surprise - one of the moments of their existence. Light… It is everywhere in Esionov’s paintings that are full of multi-vocal, fierce light torn from the shadows of life and events which are hidden by the artist. We can see a purely subjective reflection of humanity hopes for salvation through art, poetry, music – the music sounding in the master’s watercolors. Maybe, it is Gustav Maler or a little known melody plunging us into reverie and not allowing to see the world as it is with all its ugliness, pains and madness. This is the art of Andrey Esionov: amazing, surprising, diverse and always congenial to a human who really needs it”.
“The artist Esionov has achieved an extraordinary mastery in watercolor painting, - explains the Italian historian, publicist, journalist and the exhibition curator Giordano Bruno Guerri. It is clear, that Andrey has a brilliant technique acquired in schools wh ere they taught in the manner of our Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism artists, or those who had to learn drawing, in my opinion, in Academies of the vast Russian universe… Esionov likes and prefers the immediacy of watercolor, which does not allow mistakes in execution, but his works produced in oil paints are of no less perfect quality. The canvases presented at the exhibition are distinguished by modernity in all its power that I define as post-socialist realism or contemporary figurative realism. Everywhere, all of us are “Strangers” and the artist’s warning prompts us to think deeply of art and human nature. I am leaving the exhibition with a distinct desire to be more sympathetic to “others”, including those who I pass by in the streets, as well as I am fully confident, that the expressive means of classical art remain an eternal tool for displaying today’s world…”
The biography. Andrey Esionov was born in Tashkent (the USSR) in 1963. In 1981, he finished the Republican School for Advanced Leaning of Music and Art wh ere he majored in graphics and was enrolled in A. Ostrovsky Tashkent State Theater and Art Institute wh ere he studied easel painting.
Andrey Eshionov is a Russian painter and graphic artist, author of portraits and cityscapes, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (2018), Honorary Academician of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence (Italy); Member of the Artists’ Creative Union of Russia (1995), the Moscow Union of Artists, International Art Foundation, Artists’ Union of Russia.
Andrey Esionov works in the genre of portrait and is very active in watercolor painting. The artist’s works are in collections of a number of major museums including the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan (Kazan), Uzbekistan State Museum of Arts (Tashkent), the Museum of the Academy in Florence(Italy), the Vatican Museums, the Museum of the Church of San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome (Italy), the Museum of the Pantheon-Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres in Rome (Italy), as well as other famous museums and galleries. Andrey Esionov has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Arts (2012), “Shuvalov” Medal of the Russian Academy of Arts (2016), Medal of the Order For Services to Motherland 2nd Rank (2019) - for his great contribution to the promotion of Russian culture and art, Tair Salakhov Medal (2023).
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