Masha Andreeva has graduated from the Surikov’s Institute just recently. She happened to take lessons from wonderful teachers who shaped her artistic personality and made her into a professional graphic artist. Boris Uspenskiy, Nikolay Voronkov, Anatoly Yakushin, strict and demanding teachers brought her to the path of genuine and pure art. Her graduation work immediately attracted attention. it was a series of lithos dedicated to Russian life, folk festivals, so called “back country” which has always been a source for the Russian culture. That graphic series was a success upon graduation defense. Graphic art of Masha Kuznetsova, free from false “bast shoes”, from hypocrisy, over-sophistication and boffinry, encourages faith and optimism.
The sheet with a colorful Russian character – a bear at the feast – is particularly fine. It is original and full of humor. All the series is a blow against advertising which haunts us so frequently on all TV channels and averts with its cheapness and stylistic lies. The Russian is not a local notion but rather a deep philosophical concept, a concept of paramount importance, an entire worldview, if you like. That is why Ivan Bunin could write one of his best books “Dark Alleys” in a far-off land of France and Sergei Rakhmaninov created one of his best concerts abroad as well. Stravinsky, Nabokov, Kandinsky, Brodsky, Shemyakin – all of them and their art do not bear the local mark but are rather the Great Russians, which makes them global and consequently significant and eternal.
A still life series was successfully exhibited at the All-Russian exhibition of 2001 and validated mature masterhood of an artist and seemed to determine her development for many years ahead. For these two series Kuznetsova was awarded with Governor’s prize in the city of Perm where she came from. But unappeased character and incessant search is the source for a genuine artist, a modern artist since she lives in a cascade of air stones falling on her every hour as collisions and changes. A new series is completely different. Conditionally it can be called “Black Trees on a White Plane”. It looks very easy… Everything is reduced to minimum, no plot, no decorations and flirting. Black on white. Meanwhile every sheet is a formula of feelings, they are concealed emotions of high internal energy. The sheets are perfect and modern not in a “stylish” way but up-to-date since a modern man holds back too many feelings, does not pap and does not seek a soul response to his thoughts in art. Every sheet contains the drama, the nerve and the calm quietness.
A true sign of an artistic piece deepness is the spectator’s and connoisseur’s willingness to come back to it. One wants to see these works many times. This way of art is hard, it is not an “eye-catcher”, but that is the way one should go and which eventually brings one closer to the Truth. Now M.Andreeva creates an interesting, in my opinion, cycle of works called “A Portrait – an Image of a Contemporary Man”.
Wonderful Russian artists of the 30-s opened the doors in that direction: V.Lebedev, A.Deineka, M.Cheremennyh, V.Kurdov, I.Malyutin, A.Samohvalov in their imaginative and keen way brought to us the air of time, its characteristics at the prime. That also entails difficulties arising when this topic is developed. But it is decent and honorable to absorb the graphic art of the past and integrate your own vision into it. Traditions are not a team of horses to ride but rather the way to walk on in one’s creativity.
The series of M.Andreeva is created in the lithoprint technique. One can see here a connection of modern times to the Russian graphic art, which were blooming in the mid twentieth century. The series is the artist’s success, her inner force and, I believe, an assumption for future creative work. I want to wish that Masha Andreeva would not get drowned in the bog of everyday routine as it unfortunately often happens to many of our graduates, and that she would not replace beauty and keen vision of art with computer-aided anemia or fashionable swaggering.
O.Savostyuk,
People’s Artist of Russia, Head of Graphic Art Faculty of Surikov’s Art Institute, professor.
