A unique exhibition of Alfrid Shaimardanov opened in Yekaterinburg
At the end of the Year of Tatarstan in Russia, the Museum of Naive Art has opened an exhibition of the artist from Kazan Alfrid Shaimardanov "Happiness forever!" The exposition includes 37 works by "Pirosmani of Kazan". This is the first personal exhibition of the artist in Yekaterinburg, although visitors to the Museum of Naive Art in Yekaterinburg are already familiar with his works - the permanent exhibition presents three paintings by Shaimardanov. One of the works was even on a poster dedicated to the opening of the museum in 2017.
As befits a naive artist, Alfrid Shaimardanov has no special art education. He was born in 1961 in the village of Sababash in the Sabinsky district of Tatarstan. He spent his childhood in Karaganda, in 1962 his parents went to work in Kazakhstan. My father worked all his life in a coal mine, mother - at a bakery. One of the brightest childhood memories for Alfrid was a film about the Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani, whose unusual fate made an indelible impression on the boy, which turned out to be prophetic.
After school, he worked at a heating equipment plant as a milling machine operator, served in the Northern Fleet. Then he returned to Karaganda, went as a milling machine operator to the Stroyplastmass plant, where a tragic incident occurred - his left hand fell under the press. The hand was saved, but the young man had to do something less traumatic and more meaningful. Shaimardanov went to Leningrad, where he entered the Leningrad Institute of Film Engineers. Studying in the northern capital and the cultural environment played a key role in the creative development of the artist.
After graduating from the institute, Shaimardanov came to Kazan, where he worked for several years at a newsreel studio, including with the now famous documentary filmmaker Marina Razbezhkina. In her opinion, "Alfrid's paintings are not so much high art as the ability to say something that has been forgotten by a huge number of people, this is a rare gift, incredibly valuable in helping us remember the forgotten - our historical childhood."
At first glance, the themes of Alfrid Shaimardanov's works are quite typical for naive artists - holidays, paradise, animals, his hometown of Kazan. However, if you look closely at his paintings, you can see that behind the naivety of the forms, there is an oversight, a lot of symbols, sly quotes from the world classics of naive art - Henri Rousseau, Niko Pirosmani, Ivan Generalich.
"The ball flew away" is the artist's earliest painting, in the work on which his studio friends helped him.
“I made the stretcher myself in the art studio. The studio helped me. This picture has nothing to do with Bulat Okudzhava's song "The ball flew away". It is connected with my life in a hostel in Kazan. I thought then that I would not get out of there. A policeman and a welder lived in the room with me - they liked to drink, there were always some fights, sorting out the relationship. I transferred such a sad atmosphere and my attitude to the canvas, ”the author notes.
A novice artist then, one might say, was lucky, "The ball flew away" and several more works immediately got to the large exhibition "Avant-garde yesterday, today, tomorrow" at the State Museum of Fine Arts of Tatarstan.
Another characteristic feature of the artist's creative manner is exuberant imagination and clever juggling with real and fictional events. One of the early paintings, for example, is dedicated to the stay in Kazan of the main surrealist of all times and peoples, Salvador Dali. The fact is that Dali's wife Gala (Elena Dyakonova) is from Kazan.
“In 1985, when I still hadn't thought of becoming an artist, I came across an article in the Izvestia newspaper entitled“ Why cows don't fly ”. By the way, the article can be found on the Internet. This was one of the last interviews with Salvador Dali. The Soviet journalist then stopped in Spain and wanted to meet with Dali, but the artist was already very sick, no one was allowed to see him. The journalist then lied, said that he was from Kazan, and this played a decisive role. Salvador Dali told him a lot of interesting things, opened up, admitted that he had seen and experienced a lot in this life. And the only desire that will no longer come true is to visit Gala's homeland in Kazan. I clung to this dream of Dali and decided to make it happen. I am often asked - how was the picture born? In this case, it grew out of an article in a newspaper, "the author said in an interview with the Kultura-Urala.RF portal.
This work has a different story. Dali and Gala traveled a lot around the world and quite often, in many countries they held a wedding ceremony there according to local traditions. Well, I put them in Kazan, at the Kazan Kremlin I dressed up in Tatar wedding suits. He added, of course, Dali's trademarks-symbols - lips, eyes, an egg, which he often finds in his work.
This is another mythological and fantasy work of the artist. Robert Gabitov never became the first Tatar cosmonaut. He did not become an astronaut at all, but thanks to Shaimardanov's painting, many people think that .
“My friend (Robert Gabitov) studied at the Academy. Zhukovsky in Moscow and passionately dreamed of becoming the first Tatar cosmonaut. At the end of the 1970s, he even got an appointment with Valentina Tereshkova, she promised to help him, to arrange him into the cosmonaut corps. And with joy he returned to the unit, took alcohol, decided to celebrate this news with his fellow students. In general, the next morning the political officer came and he was kicked out of the academy for drunkenness. He told me this sad story, and I decided to make his dream come true at least on canvas. And sent to the moon. Why a horse? Well, what is a Tatar without a horse? By the way, Robert complained to me later, said that he was now perceived as an astronaut, friends ask - what did you hide from us, that you were in space? Here's a funny story. "
Fantasy work, author's repetition of the 2005 painting. Maya Plisetskaya performs the dance of a dying swan in front of a certain collective African tribe, headed by an eastern ruler. The women, by the way, in this picture are all wearing masks - a kind of tribute to today's coronavirus reality. Shaimardanov decided to paint this picture for the anniversary of Maya Plisetskaya. In 2020, the great ballerina would have turned 95:
“I had such a small work dedicated to Plisetskaya, she was exhibited in Moscow in 2005, when Maya Plisetskaya was 80 years old, and she herself came to the exhibition then. Her admirers and especially admirers, grandmothers of the same age asked her - Maya Mikhailovna, did you really perform in Africa like this, as the artist portrayed? I thought, well done! Now Plisetskaya will smear me. But no, she is so delicate, she explained to the grandmothers that this is the artist's fantasy. "
In Africa, however, Plisetskaya performed, but not on a rock in the desert in front of an African tribe, but in Alexandria. In the middle of the twentieth century, Egyptian Alexandria was a completely Europeanized metropolis where Germans, Greeks and Italians lived. There was a good opera house in Alexandria, on the stage of which Plisetskaya danced in Swan Lake.
The work is interesting in that it cites paintings from an earlier period. For example, the yellow house correlates with the work of 2005, when the artist was fond of abstract art. It was supposed to be just an abstract yellow square, but it has grown into something more material.
“I like to meditate when I paint. As a rule, one painting takes several months. And lately I’m not in a hurry at all, I’m getting high, writing one work for 4-5-6 months. I can't work on several paintings in parallel at all, I'm not a salon artist. And I never set myself the task of painting pictures for sale. For museums, yes. Therefore, my formats are large. Initially, when I came to the art studio in the 90s, I said - I will paint only for museums, I don't care about any paintings for furniture. This is generally a thorny path, of course, difficult, but I chose it. And, as it seems to me, I am in my place. Often, when you paint pictures and then arrange exhibitions, you feel the understanding that all this is correct and a feeling of happiness. Happiness because I am in my place. "
Exhibition "Happiness forever!" works at the Museum of Naive Art (Yekaterinburg, Rosa Luxemburg St., 18) until April 4, 2021.
Text by Irina Kiseleva, photos by Evgeny Potorochin / Kultura-Urala.RF