Boris Sveshnikov

(Russian, 1927-1998)

Album de dessins comprenant 38 dessins, fin des années 1950/ Drawing album comprising 38 drawings, late 1950s
ink and pencil on paper

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired from the family of the artist in 2003
Private collection, USA


Boris Sveshnikov was a subtle and virtuosic master artist with a tragic fate. Though his work chronologically belongs to the nonconformism era, in spirit he is closer to the Symbolist artists of the Silver Age. A reclusive creator with a unique visual language incorporating elements of Surrealism, Conceptualism and Realism, he channelled his perspective on reality onto paper and canvas. The harrowing Gulag ordeal that spanned eight years of his life undoubtedly left an ineffaceable imprint on Sveshnikov's art, perpetually suffused with a tinge of tragedy and anguish. "I will nonetheless carry through all the deprivations and tribulations the holy flame of art, kindled in my soul," he once said.
Sveshnikov's drawings hold as significant a place in his body of work as his paintings. Throughout his lifetime, he crafted thousands of drawings that vividly expressed the ineffable stirrings of his psyche in both colour and black-and-white.
Of particular significance are Sveshnikov's album cycles which unite groups of drawings into thematic series. In his hands this genre, redolent of Old Masters, took on a new life. While the individual sketches may not share any visual commonalities, they are united by an air of surrealism: figures and scenes are not readily apparent, secreted away inside landscape vistas.
This, at first glance, makes his pieces seem unhurried, devoid of emotion and without meaning. However, a more prolonged look reveals disturbing and sinister acts, hidden deep within the pieces.
Nature and human forms come to life through pen strokes, stretched across the page like diaphanous webs. The reality Sveshnikov conjures up is phantasmagorical, nonsensical and lacks a sense of both place and time. To him the world formed but a springboard with which to launch himself into realms of fantasy. In execution, his peerless eye for detail links back to old masters and symbolists, but whereas they sought escapism, Sveshnikov pursued liberation of the spirit.