ARTISTS
A Cup of Consonances: Approaching Rozanova
An attempt to comprehend the singular avant-garde artist Olga Rozanova by exploring not only her own oeuvre but also its possible echoes and resonances in Soviet unofficial art and the work of present-day female artists.
Olga Rozanova鈥檚 artistic career lasted about eight years, tragically ending when she was only thirty-two. But this brief period was replete with profound stylistic transformations and keen intuitions that considerably shaped the later evolution of painting鈥攖svetopis (鈥渃olour painting鈥�), 鈥渢ransfigured鈥� colour, a radicalised Suprematism, translucent textures鈥攁nd a revolution launched by a single green stripe*.
The historical comparisons suggested by this exhibition are largely due to Rozanova鈥檚 poetics, its simultaneous timelessness and rootedness in its own time. Rozanova can be seen as an exponent of Neo-Primitivism, Futurism, and Suprematism. She cannot, however, be contained by any of these movements鈥攕he was absorbed in her own exploration of colourism, composition, and rhythm, and by her thirst for incessant innovation. In a sense, we can speak of Rozanova鈥檚 aesthetic anarchism, as expressed in her eschewal of gurus, her unwillingness to heed a single method, and her work鈥檚 resistance to neat art-historical periodisation. Rozanova is a contemporary artist par excellence to the extent that her art evinces the 鈥渄isjunctive unity鈥� of different eras. This irresolution and unity in disjunction are typical of Rozanova鈥檚 artistic method, as embodied in the tension between stasis and dynamism, colour and geometry, solid colour compositions and whitewashed luminous colour鈥攁s, indeed, more generally, in the tension between figurativism and abstraction.
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An attempt to comprehend the singular avant-garde artist Olga Rozanova by exploring not only her own oeuvre but also its possible echoes and resonances in Soviet unofficial art and the work of present-day female artists.
Olga Rozanova鈥檚 artistic career lasted about eight years, tragically ending when she was only thirty-two. But this brief period was replete with profound stylistic transformations and keen intuitions that considerably shaped the later evolution of painting鈥攖svetopis (鈥渃olour painting鈥�), 鈥渢ransfigured鈥� colour, a radicalised Suprematism, translucent textures鈥攁nd a revolution launched by a single green stripe*.
The historical comparisons suggested by this exhibition are largely due to Rozanova鈥檚 poetics, its simultaneous timelessness and rootedness in its own time. Rozanova can be seen as an exponent of Neo-Primitivism, Futurism, and Suprematism. She cannot, however, be contained by any of these movements鈥攕he was absorbed in her own exploration of colourism, composition, and rhythm, and by her thirst for incessant innovation. In a sense, we can speak of Rozanova鈥檚 aesthetic anarchism, as expressed in her eschewal of gurus, her unwillingness to heed a single method, and her work鈥檚 resistance to neat art-historical periodisation. Rozanova is a contemporary artist par excellence to the extent that her art evinces the 鈥渄isjunctive unity鈥� of different eras. This irresolution and unity in disjunction are typical of Rozanova鈥檚 artistic method, as embodied in the tension between stasis and dynamism, colour and geometry, solid colour compositions and whitewashed luminous colour鈥攁s, indeed, more generally, in the tension between figurativism and abstraction.
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