Drawing in Space

Oleg Kudryashov was born and grew up in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin. He witnessed the hardships and deprivations of the Second World War and began training as an artist at ten years old in 1942 in a country where art was synonymous with Socialist Realism. Yet as he came to maturity, in the 1960s and 1970s, he broke away from the aesthetic norms that had been imposed on Russian art since the 1930s and began to pursue his own ideas. He did not join the dissident movement or become a recognised ‘unofficial artist’, but his uncompromisingly independent spirit, artistic integrity, and innovative talent won the respect of all those who did. From the beginning, he followed his own artistic goals and inspiration, refusing to yield to external pressures – whether these were artistic, political, or commercial. This fiercely independent spirit and refusal to defer to the demands and opinions of others has been a constant characteristic of his creative personality. It led him to leave the USSR in 1974, and settle in London, and then in 1998 to return to Moscow, following the fall of Communism. It also led him to produce an outstanding and original body of work, which has secured the well-deserved recognition of being acquired by some of the world’s most prestigious galleries, including the Tate Gallery in London and The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

Although he has worked in other media, Kudryashov has mainly concentrated on the drypoint etching, consistently exploring its technical and aesthetic possibilities to the maximum. His inventiveness has manifested itself in straight-forward prints (abstract and figurative, large and small), triptych groupings, and three-dimensional reliefs and constructions. Using the sharp point of a burin engraving needle, he draws, with intense energy, directly onto the zinc plate, without making any preliminary studies or sketches. Working quickly to maximise the momentum of the creative impulse, he completes the entire design quickly, as though it were one sustained gesture. The prints themselves embody the physical and emotional vigour of this process; zinc filings, gouged out of the plate by the burin, are impressed into the paper during printing, adding metallic richness to the vibrant surface texture. In 1980, he began applying gouache or watercolour washes to the paper before printing. Under the pressure of the rollers these strokes are transformed into cascades of juxtaposed colours, which can be gentle and elusive, or bold and highly saturated. Such washes are not mere embellishments of the initial. drawn structure, but rather an integral part of the spatial interplay.

Kudryashov’s impulse to extend the linear structure of the drypoint out into real space was first manifest in 1957 when he made his first paper constructions. During the 1960s he created objects from paper and tin, using paint to enhance the expressive qualities of the forms produced. After he arrived in Britain in 1974, he started making small paper reliefs, but it was only in 1978 that he began to produce three-dimensional reliefs from drypoint prints, obliterating the traditional boundaries between printing, painting and sculpture. The reliefs are usually constructed from two etchings, produced from a single plate: one print forms the base of the work, while the other is cut and sliced into rectilinear or curvilinear elements which are twisted and contorted to develop the linear theme into three-dimensional volumes. The process of cutting the paper with the knife seems to be a natural extension of incising the plate with the burin. While Kudryashov draws on the zinc plate as if it were a piece of paper, he uses the printed paper as if it were metal, exploiting its stiffness to cut and bend it into rigid structures. These constructions reiterate and develop the formal theme of the imagery, evoking a more complex set of spatial relationships. The implied space and luminosity of the printed tones and drawing interact visually with the actual projections of form and the incisions into the ground plane, and also with the real play of light and cast shadow upon the work.

Kudryashov’s exploration of these interests has produced an enormous variety of work. In certain reliefs the elements cling closely to the surface of the print, while in others they form extensive and complex constructions, advancing dramatically into the viewer’s space. Since 1983 the spatial interplay of geometric shapes has been modified by the addition of irregular organic forms, made from thinner paper that has been crumpled, slashed, coloured and twisted. Subtle tones in some works contrast with vibrant and saturated tones in others. The artist’s mastery of colour is also manifest in a more recent series of bold gouaches.

The technical virtuosity of Kudryashov’s work and the profundity of its formal experimentation allies him with those innovative artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin who were working in Russia in the 1910s and 1920s. This affinity is particularly evident in the dynamic and angular figurations of the reliefs from 1982-4. Any kinship with the heroic Russian avant-garde, however, is not the result of conscious emulation, but rather is the result of Kudryashov’s own committed and rigorous exploration of the creative possibilities of line, form, colour and material.

Kudryashov sees himself as the descendant of the country’s traditional icon painters, and lubok artists who produced popular prints for the masses. Even his ostensibly abstract works contain allusions to the icon images of the Mother and Child or to everyday urban life and the environment, capturing the austere poetry of the city and sometimes incorporating references to Moscow’s houses, streets and tramlines, the huge rolls of wire from the steel factory near his childhood home, the stark outlines of half-demolished buildings in London, and even violent incidents that he witnessed in his youth.

The results are beautiful, compelling and vividly original works of art that convey Kudryashov’s his own unique vision, revealing both the poetry and the desolation that is everywhere around us, inspiring a new spatial awareness and a new consciousness of reality.