Yevgeny Ukhnalev. "An Obscure Time"
Painting, Graphic Work
4 September 2001 - 1 October 2001

The latest in the cycle of exhibitions entitled "They worked in the Hermitage" features the works of Yevgeny Ilyich Ukhnalev. It comprises 30 graphic and painted works, representing very fully the artist's oeuvre. This, Ukhnalev's first one-man exhibition in the State Hermitage, is taking place in the year he celebrates his 70th birthday. Yevgeny Ukhnalev is a People's Artist of Russia and a member of the Heraldic Council operating under the auspices of the President of the Russian Federation. He was born in Leningrad in 1931. In his childhood he survived the siege and evacuation. On his return to the city he studied at the Artistic Secondary School attached to the Academy of Arts. In 1948 Yevgeny Ukhnalev was convicted on a false charge of anti-state activities. After his release in 1954, he returned to Leningrad and worked as an architect in various design institutes. From 1967 to 1975 he was head of the Hermitage architectural deapartment. Later he worked for publishing houses, while devoting the bulk of his time to easel painting and graphic art. Yevgeny Ukhnalev has participated in more than 40 exhibitions in Russia and abroad. The first exhibition to feature the artist's work was held in 1980.
Since 1992 Yevgeny Ukhnalev has worked for the State Heraldic Service operating under the auspices of the President of the Russian Federation. He is the creator of implemented designs for the State Coat of Arms of the Russian Federation, the symbol of Presidential Authority, the Order of St Andrew the First-Called, Russian orders and medals, and the certificates for State Awards.
Yevgeny Ukhnalev began late as an artist. He himself considers that his first truly independent works are those that date from the mid-1970s.
The exhibition opens with early works, small landscape sketches made during the artist's time as a prisoner in Vorkuta that have miraculously survived.
The distinctive quality of Ukhnalev's work lies in his ability to penetrate into the inner life of the world around. Each of his creations is a mysterious world of its own. A frequent feature of his works are depictions of windows, doors and arches. They provide, as it where, a small view into these arcane worlds. It is precisely the profundity, philosophy and, at the same time, mystery that attracts in the 1978 watercolour The Road to Nowhere and in the 1979 graphic work My Altar. Yevgeny Ukhnalev's oeuvre is not devoid of a metaphorical tendency, yet at the same time his works retain an inner integrity, remain something more than a simple indication of concepts. The artist has two favourite film-directors — Andrei Tarkovsky and Federico Fellini. He is linked to them by an understanding of the simultaneity of past, present and future, of the multiple meanings of reality. The 1990 painting entitled The Zone (after Tarkovsky) is connected with motifs of the Russian director's film.
Yevgeny Ukhnalev has his place among the generation of creative figures who gave new features to St Petersburg art in the second half of the twentieth century. His contribution is vital and irreplaceable. While describing himself as a realist, he created his own realism that resembled no other.
The Hermitage exhibition is extended by designs for heraldic works produced by the artist. A catalogue, Yevgeny Ukhnalev. Painting and Graphic Work, with colour and black-and-white illustrations has been produced for the exhibition.

The Great Courtyard of the Hermitage
1995
Larger view