online exhibitions:
Canyon
Landscapes
Italy Revisited
Stonehenge
Landscapes
online
retrospectives:
Blue and Red
Centaur
Series
Central Park Landscapes
Clownade
Duality
Face to Face
Human Kind
Masks
Neo Cubo-Futurism
Princess
Sculptural
Sand Reliefs
Song of Love
Still Life
Time of Beauty
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the artist:
Artist
Statement
Biography
Exhibitions
Commentary
Contact
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"Anatoly Krynsky
- A Life of Art" by Gaither Stewart |
Ironically Krynsky's
certain economic success in the 1960s and 70s of the former Soviet
Union also changed his life in a fundamental manner. As an
illustrator for magazines like Molodaya Gvardia and Krugozor, for
the APN Press Agency and as an "official artist" on a variety of
state art projects he, like many artists and writers of the period,
enjoyed a relative material success. "That might seem positive but
the reality was that I had no time for my own art. Therefore I
decided on the most decisive step in my life -- emigration with my
wife and daughter to the United States.
"My first emigration however," he explains, "was no easier than my
emigration to the USA. Those familiar with the Soviet Union will
understand how difficult it was then to move from Kharkov to Moscow.
I had to legally divorce my wife and contract a fictitious marriage
just to get a residence permit in Moscow.
"In a similar manner, although I've been a professional artist for
forty years, I still feel like an explorer in the world of art,
which I believe is evident in all my works. And explorers are by
nature and choice solitary and lonely people. Each must find his own
path to self-expression, his own character, his own style. On that
path he experiences all the difficulties and all the joys. Some
succeed. Some fall into oblivion. I believe that that lonely search
is the basis of every creative person. I've always had my calling as
an artist-explorer to help me."
The body of Anatoly Krynsky's works attests his loyalty to Byzantine
spiritualism which however he exalts with a new voice and achieves
unexpected openings toward Western culture. He has been able to
transfigure Eastern mysticism within the polyphonic richness of
Europe. His work demonstrates that art is the kingdom of a freedom
that must discipline itself so as not to degenerate into anarchy.
His dancing centaurs are not pure lyrical emotion and inspiration.
Little or nothing is left to chance here no more than in his earlier
Constructivist and Cubist works.
"Some of these paintings might appear to be tumult and chaos,"
Krynsky says, "but I assure you it's not at all. For above all I
love the rule that corrects emotion."
Alone there with his Pelikan etching press, and among his centaurs
and masks and kings and lonely dolls and sand Reliefs and Central
Park trees and Russian icons, Krynsky comes to resemble his
subjects. He too laments and complains that he is always alone.
"Yet,' he admits, "I need that solitude in the search for truth in
my work. For I know that truth lives there."
Reprinted by permission from
Tower of Babel.
Gaither Stewart, correspondent in Italy for the Dutch daily
Algemeen Dagblag, has written widely on European culture and
reported for many years on East Europe for many European
publications.
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