Krasnopevtsev. Equilibrium of the Unequal

Project Creators
Founder of AZ/ART Center for Contemporary Art / Natalia Opaleva
Curator / Natalya Volkova
Exhibition Designer / Katya Bochavar

On September 25, the AZ/ART Center for Contemporary Art on Maroseyka will present the exhibition "Krasnopevtsev: The Balance of the Unequal," dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth. The exhibition features over 50 paintings and graphic works from the collections of AZ Museum, the Prometheus Foundation, and private collections. This exhibition-meditation brings together the artist's works with unique artifacts from his studio that over many years became the subjects of his paintings — shells, clay jugs, stones, brass candlesticks, and antique books.

Dmitry Krasnopevtsev is one of the leaders of unofficial art. A philosopher-artist, mystic, and symbolist whose work stands in opposition to the hustle and haste of the modern world.

Dmitry Krasnopevtsev is called the "keeper of time." He himself possessed a unique collection of ancient artifacts that transformed his studio into an art object during the artist's lifetime. The still life genre became for him a symbol of the absolute, metaphysical suspension of time. He called his compositions "metaphysical still lifes" and contemplated ontological categories within them: life, death, time, eternity. First, people disappeared from his works, then color disappeared, and the still life acquired a new artistic aesthetic. Krasnopevtsev showed us how boundless the still life genre can be.

Natalia Opaleva, Director General of AZ Museum and AZ/ART Center:
"Art historian Elena Murina wrote that only those who could do nothing about their destiny to be themselves — Krasnopevtsev, Zverev, Nemukhin, Weisberg, and others — were able to unreservedly oppose themselves to the official establishment. Dmitry Krasnopevtsev is one of my most beloved artists. This outstanding and recognized master with a completely unique voice, an artist outside of everyone and everything. The AZ Museum collection contains over seventy works by the Master — from early drawings of the 1940s to his recognizable metaphysical still lifes. The exhibition for his centenary is a tribute to an extraordinary person and artist in whom talent, personality, and worldview merged into one."

The epigraph to the exhibition is a portrait of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev by Anatoly Zverev — one of his finest works. It is displayed alongside Krasnopevtsev's early works, his theatrical experiments, and posters. The right hall of the exhibition has been transformed into Richter's apartment, where piano music performed by the great pianist, a friend of Krasnopevtsev, is always playing. Concerts of contemporary composers will also be held here during the exhibition.

The main body of the exhibition consists of paintings from different periods, but a special place is given to graphic works — Krasnopevtsev's so-called "alphabet." The presented sketches contain the elements from which his paintings grew. The exhibition also features notebooks with the artist's notes, letters, and drawings.

Natalya Volkova, exhibition curator: "An artist of silence who demands silence. In our turbulent, chaotic world, his paintings are an ecological niche of tranquility, mystery, and wonder. A reclusive artist, philosopher, mystic, symbolist, he stands in opposition to the senseless bustle and haste of the modern world. The race of 'all-destroying time' has been stopped. The dead nature of Krasnopevtsev's nature morte makes us feel time, its inevitability, compels us to think acutely about life and immortality, to sense the edge of the physical world. On his canvases unfolds the mysterious life of objects, outside of society, environment, place. This is a conversation about immortality, about harmony, about the balance toward which everything strives. Human wholeness gave birth to the remarkably integral world of his art. One wants to gaze long into his aristocratic face, just as into his works. Such faces were rare then and have completely disappeared today. And we enter his studio-cell and stop time... 'Art stops time, absorbs it, does not let it disappear,' said Dmitry Krasnopevtsev. 'And a person can turn all these fragments, all this dusty archaeology into life... This is immortality, this is the great continuity of life.'"

The exhibition architecture references Dmitry Krasnopevtsev's studio — a sacred space filled with special meanings. The artist was surrounded by antique books, ceramic vessels, stones, seashells, ritual objects, organic artifacts. Krasnopevtsev did not simply paint them; he created in their presence. Exhibition designer Katya Bochavar has created compositions from objects that were in Krasnopevtsev's studio. These compositions are not copies from paintings or photographs but are reflections on the master's creative work.

Katya Bochavar, exhibition designer: "Krasnopevtsev is an artist in whose paintings architecture is embedded. The objects depicted in them — their outlines and the rhythms of their arrangement — beg to become part of the exhibition design. This is the first thing you understand when approaching an exhibition of this outstanding artist. The AZ ART Center space needs only a few lines and careful strokes for the vaults of the old building to become arches, the sides of jugs, and the shells from Krasnopevtsev's paintings. I wanted the connection between the place and the artist to be organic. I wanted to paint a painting-homage to Krasnopevtsev in the technique of 'here and now,' using the materials that the space provided me, only slightly adding functional objects. The exhibition should be slightly precarious, balancing on the edge between museum and studio. All the objects, all the paintings are very precisely positioned in their places, and at the same time, they resemble flowers that have accidentally sprouted and already dried."

Throughout the exhibition, visitors can listen through headphones to the text of the artist's diaries, read by actor Boris Pertsel. Thus, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev's presence becomes almost palpable. The exhibition program includes a lecture series and a cycle of musical concerts prepared by composer Sergei Terentyev and producer Anton Karetnikov with the participation of the Nikolai Karetnikov Foundation. There will also be a presentation of the catalogue of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev's paintings, compiled by Alexander Ushakov.

The exhibition will run until February 1, 2026. Admission is charged; the full ticket price is 400 rubles. The reduced ticket price is 200 rubles.