Walk of a Dreamer

“A Dreamer's Walk” is the pilot project at the new AZ Museum art space, dedicated to contemporary art. Though, as Anatoly Zverev said, an artist should be not contemporary, but relevant to his time. That is where the mystery of modernity is hidden: the present time appropriates all that it wants to consider (and considers) relevant, from rock paintings of prehistoric epochs to media installations of the XXI century.

Fyodor Semenov-Amursky (1902-1980) could formally be referred to as a nonconformist, since the most active period of his work falls on the 1960s-1970s. But, in fact, he was a completely independent figure: having graduated from the school of academic painting, and then trained in the avant-garde academy (Vkhutemas), he neither represented the aesthetics of the common contemporary trends nor was a part of the socialist-realism art movement. Mostly, the artist was oriented toward the European art nouveau — Matisse, Cezanne, Bonnard.

“The language of Semenov-Amursky's painting is the language of symbolism culture, and symbolism is meant here not as an aesthetic program, not as an idea, but as a way of living reality, as a person's intention to pass through the conventionality covered with appearances to the openness of the real, and leave this openness, called to the surface, on a sheet", states art historian Alexander Balashov.

Actually, Semenov-Amursky does live in that happy reality he is narrating about, though it is seen only by the artist and shown through his art. We could share his view by contemplating the colorful worlds expressed through the visual language.

The artist Igor Shelkovsky organized two Paris exhibitions of his friend Semyonov-Amursky in France in 1988 and 1993. The graceful framing by Shelkovsky could be considered as a separate art object as he created pieces using the same techniques as for his own works.