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© 2009-2024 Honorary Artist of Russia Sergei Kirillov's Art Gallery
«Images of Russian History».
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Articles about Artist

01/03/1996

V. Pogodin. Painting History. The historic and artistic album "Images of Russian History". 1996

Vladimir Pogodin, art historian

Painting History

It was only a few years ago that the Russian media first spotlighted a new bright name - the artist Sergei Kirillov, whose work is fully dedicated to Russian history. After some time we can rightfully say that the artist's resonant success was not accidental or transient. Since then, he has held eleven one-man shows. His paintings illustrate history textbooks and other serious papers on history; press coverage continues, his shows still draw crowds, and - perhaps, most significantly, -he creates new exciting canvases that make experts regard the artist as a mature historic painter.

Russian history is certainly a vast and fertile field for any researcher, scholar, author or artist. Like in other areas of culture, much can be stifled by weeds. Hence the importance of good fruits. But they do not appear by themselves. Only arduous and purposeful work will yield them. And this is what Sergei Kirillov's work is like. It comprises various genres: picture, portrait, landscape, still life. Almost always they combine realistic imagery with a complicated world of symbolism, association and metaphor. The author goes beyond mere portrayal to bring out the persons' inner world. His reflections on the past speak out on the present and future to his contemporaries. He aims not only to create art, but also to reach hearts. Notably,addressing contemporaries and descendants has always been the noble goal of Russia's prodigious men of culture.

Sergei Kirillov's artistic image emerges from constant work with historical documents, studies of historians' works and papers; he often meets and consults researchers to draw historical knowledge directly. His artistic and scientific position resulted from meaningful conversations with such major scholars as Academician B.Rybakov, Professor A.Preobrazhensky, and other experts; their works were read attentively and perceived by the artist, causing a profound rational and emotional response. Historical literature and documents become thrilling reading when an austere wording gives way to vivid images in our mind's eye. It is then the artist's turn to make them visible on the canvas.

Sergei Alexeyevich Kirillov was born in 1960 in Moscow. His father, Alexei Ignatyevich Kirillov, Merited Artist of Russia, is known as a talented portraitist, exacting and delicate colourist and an experienced genre painter. The artist's mother, Galina Sergeyevna Kirillova, is an art critic. At a school of art, and then at the Surikov Art Institute, in the studio of Professor Dmitry Mochalsky, an experienced tutor and excellent genre painter, S.Kirillov was mastering the laws of colour, drawing, plastic composition and creative art. His fellow students - S.Andriyaka, N.Anokhin, D.Belyukin, M.Vishnyak, S.Gavrilyachenko, A.Yevstigneyev, S.Prisekin, E.Tkacheva, V.Maiboroda and others, - have also become well-known artists. He became an honours graduate after defending his graduation painting, Peter the Great (1984). This large canvas soon became known beyond the walls of the institute. One of the first historical graduation painting in the preceding few years, it was noticed by many and became an event in Russian fine arts. The painting was exhibited at the Moscow Academy of Arts. The painter was noticed by such prominent historians as N.Molchanov, who published the young artist's work in his monograph 'Peter the Great's Diplomacy', B.Rybakov, A.Preobrazhensky,T.Maikova, and others. Critics and historians stressed that the artist had rejected the customary manner of depreciating or glorifying the tsar - merely to show him in an unbiased way. The young painter was admitted to the Union of Artists.

As it often happens, the abundant material collected and the diversity of ideas would not fit into one canvas. So Sergei continues a series of works devoted to Peter the Great.

Thinking about Russia was an attempt to understand more comprehensively the great Emperor's personality and cause. In this painting, more subdued as compared to the graduation work, the Emperor's image is perceived more profoundly, inviting reflections and comprehension of man. This work fully revealed the author's desire to discard all bias or tendency. This is a piece of life depicted, not a story.

Unexpected impressions were awaiting the artist in the ancient town of Pereslavl-Zalessky, the birthplace of the first Russian navy - the so-called 'mock fleet' of Peter the Great. Young Peter was setting up a merchant fleet, a navy and a well-trained army. Documentary studies and sketching resulted in a large multi-figure composition, Yes to Sea-going Vessels! The picture was shown in the Manege and then purchased by the Russian Ministry of Culture and exhibited in the History and Art Museum of Pereslavl-Zalessky.

Reflections on history suggest a new the me to Sergei Kirillov. He becomes interested in the epoch of the Peasant War led by Stepan Razin. First sketches appeared: Razin standing on the scaffold and bowing to the people. That seemed to be only hackneyed fiction. Next came the idea to show the popular leader at the moment when he was being carried through Moscow for torture - on a cart, in chains stretching him by the arms and legs. Hard work on studies and drawings and the selection of models began. The final sketch, preceding the big canvas, was made in the Academic Dacha Creative Home of the Union of Artists near the town of Vyshny Volochok. This was a happy composition, unique in its special identity and acumen. It was all the more disappointing for the artist to see quite soon, at a Moscow exhibition of young artists, a hastily painted canvas fully repeating his composition. The development of the concept and collection of material were now useless. But the theme stayed and soon suggested another solution: to show Razin ascending the scaffold.

He imagined Razin on his final stairs, rising above the crowd and casting a glance at the vast crowd around. This glance would become the core of the whole emotional imagery. Kirillov was so much carried away by the theme of Razin that he painted the canvas 'At the Simbirsk Defence Line' almost simultaneously. This is the artist's first attempt to focus not on a character's psychology or emotions but simply on the impression produced by a deserted evening landscape.

It should be noted that work on a large composite canvas rich in historic meaning exhausts the artist. One has to sustain the creative quest for years, re maining in a special emotional mood. This places a great psychological strain on the artist, and he has to divert himself somehow. Sergei Kirillov would 'relax' painting historic architecture. A brilliant example of such work is a small canvas The Fortress Chamber of the Trinity and St.Sergius Monastery in the Seventeenth Century. Not the lavishly decorated buildings of the monastery but rather its backyard interests Sergei. Of course, here he is attentive to the architecture, too, but excited even more by the play of light on the rugged white of the walls, by the gentle blue and violet of the shadows, the bright green grass, and the blue luminosity of the sky... One cannot but imagine silence and peace, the unhurried life of people who have found quiet consolation in a monastery. A monk in his black cassock looks as natural in this landscape, permeated with silence, as the artist's "mischief" - a black cat walking "by himself" across a roof - or mottled home-woven rugs left to dry on the handrails. Ordinary life makes history, too, just like feat and tragedy. It is the artist's task to appreciate the beauty and to enchant viewers with it - a difficult yet important job.

Reflections on architecture led the painter to a definite conclusion that Russian architects applied a special modular design based on the old Russian system of measures. This system enables him to 'add' lost parts to buildings in his landscapes and to depict original architecture after making complicated drawings and calculations. He worked much in Pskov, reconstructing not only buildings but the whole 'city space', and thus felt how attentive our ancestors were to landscape elevations and perspective and how they achieved aesthetic integrity of the architecture and its harmony with nature.

Already when working on the image of Peter the Great, Sergei Kirillov became interested in another tsar -Ivan the Terrible. Then he was engrossed in the theme of Razin, and could approach the image of the severe tsar only gradually. He delves into literature, reflects on the documents of the epoch and on historians' assessments. Reading sources and studies gave the artist an inexpressible understanding of his character's personality - a sort of intuition. Of course, engravings of Ivan the Terrible, his parsuna portrait, and a skull reconstruction by Gerasimov had all contributed to the image. The artist had already absorbed them in a way. But the turn of the head, the expression of the eyes were still elusive... At one moment, the image of the tsar emerged before his eyes, and the artist only had to me morize and depict it. The work went on, but the face would not come: the author painted and repainted it for some forty times. The hands, the candle and other details were ready. The artist himself recollects: "Once I started to mould the face, stroke after stroke. Wrong! I wiped off the paint with a rag, but it remained, almost invisible, somewhere in the texture of the canvas. I stepped back - and suddenly saw Ivan's face from afar. Quite a different one, in a different turn and perspective. But that very face, that I had been looking for! Then I started to carefully "develop" it, stepping back to some five metres now and then, as only from this distance could I clearly see the tsar's face. Nothing but stains at a close distance, it glared at me from afar. It took me some half an hour to paint the head and face, and then I never retouched them. Out of fear to spoil and some strange fear - almost superstitious. Tsar Ivan had really "come alive" in the picture."

The canvas reflected, in a way, all the artist's previous experience. So when it was first exhibited in 1991 at the young painter's one-man show in Zvenigorod, the viewers were unanimous in calling it a remarkable work of art. Yet some noted that Ivan epitomized cruelty for the m, and for others he personified desolation and repentance. The painter was satisfied, for he had achieved his goal. One priest who had come to see the painting quoted words from the Holy Scripture: "Judye not, that ye be not judged,"as the picture's readable sense.

A history painter should know and imagine to equal perfection landscapes, things, characters pertaining to the relevant epoch, and even features of people's gait resulting from apparel cut and wearing traditions. A large canvas will normally combine all genres.

One day Sergei saw at an exhibition a golden dipper that once belonged to Ivan the Terrible. He was overwhelmed by its beautiful shape, thorough and fine workmanship, by an exquisite harmony between details and the whole decor. Of course, he could not paint the masterpiece from life and had to make a pencil sketch instead. Yet on returning to his studio he painted it from memory at once.

Working on a still life - painting an object whose shape is always strictly individual and purely functional, -makes the artist not only feel himself a goldsmith or engraver, but also remember that things are witnesses of history, albeit silent ones. This made still lifes an integral part of S. Kirillov's art.

Leafing through Russian history and reflecting on the foundations of the Russian religious spirit, the artist arrived at a difficult decision to express in his canvases a very special feeling of Orthodox Christians, associated with the sacrament of baptism, with the miraculous strength of blessing and prayer. For him, these concepts were personified in the Russian saints: Princess Olga, Sergius of Radonezh and St.Basil. It took him three years to paint the trilogy Holy Rus. For Sergei Kirillov, these saints embodied three sides of the spiritual exploit, three forms of the Christian feat committed by people from different estates: St.Olga, a princess; St. Sergius, a monk, proceeding from an impoverished boyar family; and St.Basil - a God's fool, the son of a craftsman.

Work on the canvas Saint Sergius of Radonezh: The Blessing started in 1991. Here is the artist's own story: "The idea had e merged long before, but it would not take shape; I couldn't even start my first sketch in oils. Then, on the day when my show opened at the museum of Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad), in the summer of 1991, I bowed to the tomb of St.Sergius. And the following night I had a vision in my sleep - the eyes... I saw St.Sergius' eyes, kind -clear - stunning! And nothing but the eyes. The rest was as though in a mist. I woke up in despair: why only the eyes? I could have seen the whole picture! I couldn't yet understand that I had seen what really mattered...

"So I painted those eyes - exactly as I'd seen them. There was almost nothing else - just some sketches and daub. Suddenly I imagined the whole picture most clearly, felt it completed and in detail. And the work went on! I was looking in St.Sergius' eyes all the time, asking him: "Right or wrong?" And there was the answer: they were not so kind at times... Of course, I had studied history, a biography of St.Sergius of Radonezh by Epiphaniy the Wise and almost all that had been written about the Trinity and St'Sergius Monastery and its Hegumen. I had studied the architecture, apparel, the saint's face as portrayed in icons, the sermons of startsi - spiritual guides - and monastic rules... But I always remembered words of the historian Aleksandr Preobrazhensky: "The past is always richer than our knowledge about it. And the artist must revive the past in its entirety.' The eyes of St.Sergius suggested all that was missing from the books. This is how the picture was born."

The artist showed the saint standing under a light cloudy sky, in a simple working cassock, and blessing the viewer with his gesture. The light colour scheme seems to e mit gentle light,that sacred light of whichmonks had dreamed so much in their philosophical meditation on the Greek hill of Athos - like the miraculous Russian saint himself in the 14th century. It is no surprise that at exhibitions some visitors stand for a long time looking at this picture and reflecting.

Since late 1992 Sergei Kirillov was working on a picture dedicated to Princess Olga. The very first sketches had appeared as early as 1988. Then the young artist was painting a portrait of Academician Boris Rybakov. During the sittings, he told the young artist a lot about the history of Russia, about St. Vladimir and Princess Olga; about their great contribution to the adoption of Christianity by Rus and how the religion that had come from Byzantium in the 10th century started taking on the Russian spirit and national content. In the canvas Princess Olga (The Baptism) the artist wished to show not only the solemn and magnificent Byzantine church cere mony, not only to convey the idea of the rapprochement between two geographically close worlds,but, first and fore most, to show the transfiguration of the human soul. "But if we believe that baptism is a sacrament, how can we depict it realistically?" - the painter asks himself. These restrictions, natural for the author, limit the narration to the brief moment when Olga, on leaving the baptistery of the St.Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople, after the font, stopped in the inner courtyard of the temple.

The artist portrays the distant event as described in the chronicle, after a thorough study of the 10th-century rite of baptism. Its interpretation imparts a special grandeur and meekness to the strong and imperious figure of Princess Olga. The very expression of her face seems lucid and dutiful. She seems to contemplate her soul and to foresee history. The sympathy and accustomed respectfulness of those around impart a special inspiration to this remarkable Russian woman - a singular way of thinking, beyond the comprehension of oth-ers.

The picture Saint Basil (The Prayer), unlike most other works, was completed almost immediately. Sergei Kiril-lov's task was as thrilling as it was difficult,if we remember that many prominent clergymen honoured God's fools, who were saving their soul amid secular life, even higher than monks who kept all temptation beyond high walls.

Of course, visitors coming to Sergei Kirillov's exhibitions may disagree with him on the interpretation of some characters. We are dominated by stereotypes - almost since our school-days. But finding the historical truth appears quite possible for the artist, as his own position is carefully weighed and compared with a wealth of historical sources. That does not mean that the young artist always follows his favourite concepts or tendencies. His subjective feeling often gives way to a definite "That's how it was", when most historical facts undermine his initial hypothesis. Yet intuitive knowledge is not subconscious, either; it is a special revelation, insight into a hitherto concealed depth of events thanks to a miraculous spark - something superconscious, crowning the conscious and the subconscious tiers of the human soul. Sergei Kirillov is sure that the artistic value of a historic painting hinges on truthful imagery. The artist should simply find, feel and paint that moment which fully reveals the meaning of an event or a character's inner world. This is easy to say but hard to do. Most painstaking work may fail, while a superficial study may suddenly succeed. But one should remember that art is an extremely complex and delicate thing.

Of interest is a recent series of paintings and drawings. The young artist turned to the "age of riots" again - to paint a number of historic genre portraits. These are not just reconstructions, but portrait pictures - generalized history, reflections on human characters and destinies. One of the first canvases in the series was A Boyar with the Tsar's Dipper. The boyar is almost happy with this sign of the ruler's attention, but look at his eyes - and above the good-humoured smile you will see a piercing look, some hidden fear. Russian history knows that meads, especially gift meads, were sometimes very bitter or even dangerous...

The Tom-Fool is entirely different and highly decorative. The colour scheme constantly clashes loud reds with bright greens. This bold choice seems to reveal the daring character of the man of motley, whose age has given him a special flair for people, for their merits and hidden vices. A merry jester is also a "sly courtier" who can dominate, jokingly even his master...

The Russian People series shows us a monk, a merchant, a young beauty, a boyar drinking overseas wine, the military and many, many others. The series is not yet complete. And all the characters are highly expressive and strikingly lifelike. Their faces tell us that people of the past were just like ourselves. Such portraits make time itself material and visible. This, however, can only be produced by talent merged with hard work and outstanding mastership.

Historic painting has always been among the most difficult genres of fine arts. It requires much of the artist: general culture, knowledge of the epoch, professionalism, mastership, and persistence. Historic painting is more than a historic the me. Love for the history of one's country is not enough, either. But to tread this path is an honour for every talent. This was the path of the great V.Surikov, the extraordinary I.Repin and many other remarkable Russian artists. This is an eternal field of action - and by no means is it an escape from reality or nostalgia for the past. First and foremost, it is a talk between the artist and his contemporaries, an address to the human soul and feelings. Sergei Kirillov says that historic painting is eternity speaking to eternity.