Vladimir Rusakov
Encyclopedia
Vladimir Victorovich Kibalchich (Rusakov) (June 15, 1920-July 21, 2005) was a Russian-Mexican
painter. In Mexico he is best known by the name "Vlady". The Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts (2002)
and José Clemente Orozco
, but his first attempts to paint a mural
were unsuccessful. He had to humbly learn how to be a "Mexican" artist by traveling all over the country drawing hundreds of sketches of daily life, villages, peasants, farms, domestic animals, landscapes, etc. He adapted himself to the landscape, the soil, and the light of the country that was to be his new homeland.
1947 marked a crossroads in Vlady's life. His father Victor Serge died of a heart attack. That same year, Vlady married Isabel Díaz Fabela, who would be his companion until his death. Isabel became "Vlady's homeland", to quote the phrase coined by critic Berta Teracena. She gave the Franco-Russian refugee a country and a language. She had become the primary inspiration for his art, giving a face and a body to the Eternal Feminine underlying his quest for the absolute. Vlady became a Mexican citizen two years later.
Even though he greatly admired Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco,
Vlady's painting was a strong reaction against their nationalist
and didactic stances. With a group of young Mexican painters (Alberto Gironella, Héctor Xavier and José Bartolí, soon to be joined by José Luis Cuevas
), Vlady created the Prisse Gallery in 1952. Every month, a new exhibition presented the works of the three founders and their friends. At the time, Vlady explored a near abstract
way of painting, but one that was still linked to the elements – sun rays, sea waves, sand on a beach, the trembling of the
air. Even when he seemed to turn his back on realism, Vlady maintained links with the elements. But the Prisse Gallery was not a painting school.
Each painter retained his specificity. Their only common ground was the rejection of the established art. The Prisse Gallery only lasted one year, but
Mexican art was deeply renewed. Some critics later spoke about a so called "Rupture Generation".
Vlady then made some long trips to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s (mainly France, Spain and Italy). His artwork was exhibited in Italy, Brazil
and Argentina
.
Thanks to a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
he spent an entire year in New York City (1967-68) where he met Mark Rothko
, who had just finished painting his Houston Chapel. Deeply troubled by Rothko's art (The painting you make is suicide!), Vlady came back to Mexico and severed all links with the Rupture Generation, now at the pinnacle of its success. Henceforth, Vlady's painting would be realistic. During the same years, Vlady painted what may be considered as the peak of his art: the Trotsky trilogy. The Bolshevik Magiography (1967) is a giant 140 square feet (13 m²) painting that represents the triumph of Trotsky marching proudly with his fellow comrades on Moscow's Red Square
with the Kremlin
in the background. La Casa (1973) shows the death of Trotsky with long lines of warriors from all ages: Russian revolutionaries, Zapatista
guerrillas, Arab cavalrymen, etc. In the third giant painting, The Instant (1981), Trotsky has disappeared. There only remains a table seized by a sort of frantic dance. A masterpiece of the 20th Century painting was born.
era, Kibalchich traveled to USSR to press for the rehabilitation of Trotsky and Serge.
Vlady lived and worked in Mexico City
until 1990, when he moved to Cuernavaca
, where he already had a country house with a giant studio. He died of cancer in Cuernavaca, on July 21st, 2005.
, even though he rejected both schools
of painting. His painting became "minimalist
" for a period during the 1960s, but never completely abstract, before reaching its full expression in the 1970s.
There were some marks of expressionism
in his mature way of painting, but his acknowledged model was definitely the Italian Renaissance
. Vlady lived amidst Caravaggio
, Tiziano and Artemisia Gentileschi
as if they were his contemporaries. Flemish and Dutch painting was a source of inspiration as well, in particular Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. Many of his themes were borrowed from classical painting but distorted, ground into multiple fragments and finally reinvented, exactly as Francis Bacon
made his famous study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
.
This protracted acquaintance with classical painting induced Vlady to paint according to the strictest techniques of his masters, using natural products
such as egg yolk
and earth powders, and entirely rejecting what he called industrial painting. Every morning, Vlady would go to his studio hidden between
palm trees, bougainvillea
and other tropical plants to prepare his tempera and his colours. He would then paint using layers of oil and varnish in
order to give depth to his painting and to make the light leap out of the canvas by a sort of alchemical transformation of matter into a quasi-living
vibration. This insistence on classical technique induced Vlady to reject most contemporary art that he believed had forgotten the principles of good painting. He
enjoyed saying: "If Picasso, Pablo Ruiz or Bacon could come through a time channel and come to Verrocchio's studio, or Rafael Sanzio's, they would not last a week, they would be kicked out as bad painters…"
Between 1974 and 1982, Vlady painted the murals of the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada
library of the Secretariat of the Treasury of Mexico. Called Revolution and Elements, this 22,000 square feet (2,000 square meters) mural is an heroic ode
to revolutions, not only the Russian Revolution, but also the French, the Latin American, the English and the (US) American Revolutions. The declaration of independence of the 13 colonies was as important as the storming of the Bastille by the Parisian crowd. Typical of Vlady's encyclopedic
mind, social and political revolutions were not the only ones that mattered. An important part of the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada's fresco is dedicated to the
Freudian Revolution which praised the sexual freedom of the 20th Century through the great founding myth
s of the Western civilization: Narcissus
, Adam and Eve
, etc. In 1987, Vlady was invited by Nicaragua's Sandinista Government to paint a fresco
in the Palacio Nacional (Managua) with the Canadian-Mexican
painter Arnold Belkin
.
In 2004, Vlady announced that he wanted to donate his collection of 4,601 pieces, drawing, paintings and etchings.
On February 9, 2004 the official inauguration of the Personal Room of the Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Vlady (Kibalchich) with the 154 etchings, donated by the author, in the Orenburg Museum of Fine Arts (Russia).
On May 17, 2004 he donated the first 500 artworks and the rest is currently split between the artist's home and the Centro Vlady in Mexico City (
63 Goya Street,
Col. Insurgentes Mixcoac, Del. Benito Juárez, in Mexico City).
On Juny 15, 2005 the personal anniversary exhibition of dravings in the Russian Academy of Arts.
In 2006, a retrospective
exhibition of his artwork was held at the
Palacio de Bellas Artes
(Palace of Fine Arts). Under the title "Vlady. La sensualidad y la materia" (Sensuality and Matter) the Palacio presented 500 paintings, watercolours and
drawings. This giant retrospective put together by Mercedes Iturbe cameomes with a magnificent catalogue (perfect illustrations, thorough analysis). In
2007, the Centro Vlady was launched in a building belonging to the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (UACM). The new institution makes Vlady's
archives accessible to the public.: 318 notebooks, 245 engravings, 63 oil paintings and 376 drawings are being exhibited. More than a "simple" museum,
the Centro Vlady is a cultural space that opens free artistic, political and philosophical debates of our time.
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
painter. In Mexico he is best known by the name "Vlady". The Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts (2002)
Artistic career
Vlady was immediately fascinated by the muralists Diego RiveraDiego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
and José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...
, but his first attempts to paint a mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
were unsuccessful. He had to humbly learn how to be a "Mexican" artist by traveling all over the country drawing hundreds of sketches of daily life, villages, peasants, farms, domestic animals, landscapes, etc. He adapted himself to the landscape, the soil, and the light of the country that was to be his new homeland.
1947 marked a crossroads in Vlady's life. His father Victor Serge died of a heart attack. That same year, Vlady married Isabel Díaz Fabela, who would be his companion until his death. Isabel became "Vlady's homeland", to quote the phrase coined by critic Berta Teracena. She gave the Franco-Russian refugee a country and a language. She had become the primary inspiration for his art, giving a face and a body to the Eternal Feminine underlying his quest for the absolute. Vlady became a Mexican citizen two years later.
Even though he greatly admired Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco,
Vlady's painting was a strong reaction against their nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and didactic stances. With a group of young Mexican painters (Alberto Gironella, Héctor Xavier and José Bartolí, soon to be joined by José Luis Cuevas
Jose Luis Cuevas
José Luis Cuevas is a modernist painter and sculptor from Mexico. Born in 1934, Cuevas derived most of his training outside of the academies. He is considered to be one of the artists from the 1950s in the Rupture Generation that was departing from the politicized and stylized mural school of...
), Vlady created the Prisse Gallery in 1952. Every month, a new exhibition presented the works of the three founders and their friends. At the time, Vlady explored a near abstract
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
way of painting, but one that was still linked to the elements – sun rays, sea waves, sand on a beach, the trembling of the
air. Even when he seemed to turn his back on realism, Vlady maintained links with the elements. But the Prisse Gallery was not a painting school.
Each painter retained his specificity. Their only common ground was the rejection of the established art. The Prisse Gallery only lasted one year, but
Mexican art was deeply renewed. Some critics later spoke about a so called "Rupture Generation".
Vlady then made some long trips to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s (mainly France, Spain and Italy). His artwork was exhibited in Italy, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
Thanks to a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
he spent an entire year in New York City (1967-68) where he met Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...
, who had just finished painting his Houston Chapel. Deeply troubled by Rothko's art (The painting you make is suicide!), Vlady came back to Mexico and severed all links with the Rupture Generation, now at the pinnacle of its success. Henceforth, Vlady's painting would be realistic. During the same years, Vlady painted what may be considered as the peak of his art: the Trotsky trilogy. The Bolshevik Magiography (1967) is a giant 140 square feet (13 m²) painting that represents the triumph of Trotsky marching proudly with his fellow comrades on Moscow's Red Square
Red Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
with the Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
in the background. La Casa (1973) shows the death of Trotsky with long lines of warriors from all ages: Russian revolutionaries, Zapatista
Liberation Army of the South
The Liberation Army of the South was an armed group formed and led by Emiliano Zapata that took part in the Mexican Revolution. The force was commonly known as the Zapatistas....
guerrillas, Arab cavalrymen, etc. In the third giant painting, The Instant (1981), Trotsky has disappeared. There only remains a table seized by a sort of frantic dance. A masterpiece of the 20th Century painting was born.
Later life
In 1989, following the GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
era, Kibalchich traveled to USSR to press for the rehabilitation of Trotsky and Serge.
Vlady lived and worked in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
until 1990, when he moved to Cuernavaca
Cuernavaca
Cuernavaca is the capital and largest city of the state of Morelos in Mexico. It was established at the archeological site of Gualupita I by the Olmec, "the mother culture" of Mesoamerica, approximately 3200 years ago...
, where he already had a country house with a giant studio. He died of cancer in Cuernavaca, on July 21st, 2005.
Artwork
Vlady was a painter, muralist and printmaker, and a leader of the contemporary art movement in Mexico. His main influences were Mexican muralism and French surrealismSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, even though he rejected both schools
of painting. His painting became "minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
" for a period during the 1960s, but never completely abstract, before reaching its full expression in the 1970s.
There were some marks of expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
in his mature way of painting, but his acknowledged model was definitely the Italian Renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
. Vlady lived amidst Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
, Tiziano and Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio...
as if they were his contemporaries. Flemish and Dutch painting was a source of inspiration as well, in particular Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. Many of his themes were borrowed from classical painting but distorted, ground into multiple fragments and finally reinvented, exactly as Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...
made his famous study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
Pope Innocent X
Pope Innocent X , born Giovanni Battista Pamphilj , was Pope from 1644 to 1655. Born in Rome of a family from Gubbio in Umbria who had come to Rome during the pontificate of Pope Innocent IX, he graduated from the Collegio Romano and followed a conventional cursus honorum, following his uncle...
.
This protracted acquaintance with classical painting induced Vlady to paint according to the strictest techniques of his masters, using natural products
such as egg yolk
Egg yolk
An egg yolk is a part of an egg which feeds the developing embryo. The egg yolk is suspended in the egg white by one or two spiral bands of tissue called the chalazae...
and earth powders, and entirely rejecting what he called industrial painting. Every morning, Vlady would go to his studio hidden between
palm trees, bougainvillea
Bougainvillea
Bougainvillea is a genus of flowering plants native to South America from Brazil west to Peru and south to southern Argentina . Different authors accept between four and 18 species in the genus...
and other tropical plants to prepare his tempera and his colours. He would then paint using layers of oil and varnish in
order to give depth to his painting and to make the light leap out of the canvas by a sort of alchemical transformation of matter into a quasi-living
vibration. This insistence on classical technique induced Vlady to reject most contemporary art that he believed had forgotten the principles of good painting. He
enjoyed saying: "If Picasso, Pablo Ruiz or Bacon could come through a time channel and come to Verrocchio's studio, or Rafael Sanzio's, they would not last a week, they would be kicked out as bad painters…"
Between 1974 and 1982, Vlady painted the murals of the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada
Miguel Lerdo de Tejada
Miguel Lerdo de Tejada was a Mexican statesman, and a leader of the Revolution of Ayutla.Born in the port of Veracruz, Veracruz, both he and his younger brother, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, became leaders of Mexico's Liberal Party...
library of the Secretariat of the Treasury of Mexico. Called Revolution and Elements, this 22,000 square feet (2,000 square meters) mural is an heroic ode
to revolutions, not only the Russian Revolution, but also the French, the Latin American, the English and the (US) American Revolutions. The declaration of independence of the 13 colonies was as important as the storming of the Bastille by the Parisian crowd. Typical of Vlady's encyclopedic
mind, social and political revolutions were not the only ones that mattered. An important part of the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada's fresco is dedicated to the
Freudian Revolution which praised the sexual freedom of the 20th Century through the great founding myth
Founding myth
A national myth is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation's past. Such myths often serve as an important national symbol and affirm a set of national values. A national myth may sometimes take the form of a national epic...
s of the Western civilization: Narcissus
Narcissus (mythology)
Narcissus or Narkissos , possibly derived from ναρκη meaning "sleep, numbness," in Greek mythology was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him...
, Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
, etc. In 1987, Vlady was invited by Nicaragua's Sandinista Government to paint a fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
in the Palacio Nacional (Managua) with the Canadian-Mexican
painter Arnold Belkin
Arnold Belkin
Arnold Belkin was a Mexican painter and mural artist. Born in Canada, he moved to Mexico to be closer to the Mexican artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siquerios. In the '50s he befriended the latter, collaborating with him on two murals in Mexico City...
.
In 2004, Vlady announced that he wanted to donate his collection of 4,601 pieces, drawing, paintings and etchings.
On February 9, 2004 the official inauguration of the Personal Room of the Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Vlady (Kibalchich) with the 154 etchings, donated by the author, in the Orenburg Museum of Fine Arts (Russia).
On May 17, 2004 he donated the first 500 artworks and the rest is currently split between the artist's home and the Centro Vlady in Mexico City (
63 Goya Street,
Col. Insurgentes Mixcoac, Del. Benito Juárez, in Mexico City).
On Juny 15, 2005 the personal anniversary exhibition of dravings in the Russian Academy of Arts.
In 2006, a retrospective
exhibition of his artwork was held at the
Palacio de Bellas Artes
(Palace of Fine Arts). Under the title "Vlady. La sensualidad y la materia" (Sensuality and Matter) the Palacio presented 500 paintings, watercolours and
drawings. This giant retrospective put together by Mercedes Iturbe cameomes with a magnificent catalogue (perfect illustrations, thorough analysis). In
2007, the Centro Vlady was launched in a building belonging to the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (UACM). The new institution makes Vlady's
archives accessible to the public.: 318 notebooks, 245 engravings, 63 oil paintings and 376 drawings are being exhibited. More than a "simple" museum,
the Centro Vlady is a cultural space that opens free artistic, political and philosophical debates of our time.
External links
- Centro Vlady
- Vlady’s official website
- Obituary on Marxists Internet Archive 2005.
- News about his death on El UniversalEl Universal (Mexico City)El Universal is a major Mexican newspaper.El Universal was founded by Félix Palavicini and Emilio Rabasa in October 1916, in the city of Santiago de Queretaro to cover the end of the Mexican Revolution and the creation of the new Mexican Constitution...
(in Spanish). - Vlady: De la Revolución al Renacimiento (in Spanish)