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The Ark. Porcelain by Tatyana Afanasieva This exhibition of the leading artist of Russia's oldest porcelain factory takes place in the Gallery of Modern Porcelain and has been organized jointly by the State Hermitage and the Imperial Porcelain Factory OJSC. Tatyana Afanasieva is a master of form, a delicate stylist, a connoisseur of the world's artistic culture. She is the leading artist of Russia's oldest porcelain factory. Her artwork is the result of a 30 year career at the factory. Landscapes and still lifes are the artist's favorite subjects. She strives to convey the status of nature, creating an image permeated with its own mood. This lyrical contemplation allows us to peer into the details of a landscape, moving without hurry from one plane to another. The light, almost watercolor-like landscapes, set in golden frames, are executed in a virtuoso manner of porcelain. Among all the various types and genres, forms and subjects, the porcelain of Old Russia always reserved a special place for works capturing the images of St Petersburg. In Afanasieva's porcelain, the theme of Petersburg is not reduced to painting views. She understands it in the wider context of the development of art, in a synthesis and stylistic unity with the architecture, sculpture, and the art of interiors. An age of transition, a change of millennia required that decorative solutions be found which are linked to the search for rhythm and composition. Powerful decorativeness of a new "Lucismo," liberation of the language of fine art, an expression of color and an expressive compositional device all determine the images of Tatyana Afanasieva's table porcelain. The new work which is at the center of the exhibition is the composition entitled Sounds of the Megapolis. Here we have vases as the theme and geometry as the tool. As a result of experimentation, she has created new rhythms, proportions and special relations with acute artistic expressiveness. The composition was shaped under the influence of Suprematist tendencies, with a predominance of the artistic, sculptural principle of the Orient, while avoiding the rational solutions of Constructivism. Lines grow, bend, strive to go up. Rising like symmetrical office towers, vases bring to mind the silhouettes of the bionic architecture of cities of the future. With soft silhouettes in some perspectives, with severe silhouettes in others – each of the objects possesses its construction principle and can exist either separately or in a composition. Diverse in form, complementing and enriching one another in terms of composition, they come together in an ensemble and invite one to participate in a play of volumes, as it were, where they are gigantic figures. White, almost untouched by paint, only emphasizing the geometry of forms, they show the value of the material from which they are made. In the hands of Tatyana Afanasieva, porcelain becomes a precious thing, concentrating in itself the continuity of mastery, the very rich heritage of the Imperial Porcelain Factory and the clear, laconic signature of the artist, who has a virtuoso's control of the fine points of technology. Landscapes of real reminiscences replace in her artwork architectural fantasies and fantastic landscapes. The shapes of her porcelain services and vases are sculpted with the confident hand of an architect. While developing the aesthetics of Russian porcelain, the artist precisely, simply and expressively composes her pictorial works on the surface of the form. Her works find their admirers both on the shelves of the factory stores and in display windows of Hermitage exhibitions. By means of her precious works, the artist Tatyana Afanasieva returns porcelain to its traditions, creating by her art the porcelain world of the 21st century. The exhibition presents more than 300 items from the collection of the State Hermitage, the Imperial Porcelain Factory OJSC and private collections. The Gallery of Modern Porcelain is located on Prospekt Obukhovskoy oborony, 151. |
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