As if listening to the movement of time

"Nemiga-17" creative association appeared in a difficult time, but it was able to make its considerable contribution to the development of Belarusian art of the XX-XXI centuries. Nine Belarusian artists created the foundation, which over time was strengthened by new participants. – It is necessary to underline the role of two art critics – Irina Stalnaya and Valery Buyvol, who organized exhibitions of the association in the country and abroad. By the way, Irina Stalnaya, Zoya Litvinova and Galina Gorovaya were even awarded orders of the French government "For achievements in literature and art" for their active exhibition activities and the development of cultural relations between France and Belarus, – said Nikolay Pogranovsky, chairman of the criticism and art history section of the Belarusian Union of Artists, curator of the project "Nemiga-17".

Active exhibition activity of this creative community lasted until 2002. It was then that the last joint exhibition took place in the halls of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, where the paintings by Nikolai Buschik, Zoya Litvinova, Anatoly Kuznetsov, Sergey Kiryuschenko, Leonid Khobotov, sculptures by Galina Gorova and Tamara Sokolova were exhibited. But although the exhibition at Tretyakov Gallery was widely spoken of, its participants decided to break up.

– It happens, and this is not the only case when creative associations fall apart. However, "Nemiga-17" sowed good seeds in the Belarusian soil of art, – said Nikolay Pogranovsky. – The members of this association from the very beginning of their activity did not accept the orthodox understanding of realism, sought to define their place in the context of contemporary Belarusian art of the 20th century and additionally took upon themselves the obligation to restore the interrupted pictorial searches of Belarusian masters of the 1920s.

But the co-curator of the project, Anna Malinovskaya, emphasized the fact why it was important to hold this exhibition in 2021. Yes, in general it was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the association. However, the heroes of the day are also among the artists of the creative union. Sergey Kiryushchenko turned 70 this year, and the 80th anniversary of Galina Gorova was also celebrated. It was not for nothing that the exhibition presented the works of artists from both Nemiga-17 period and their later works.

Today, the works of the members of this creative association are in the National Art Museum of Belarus, the National Center for Contemporary Arts, the Art Fund of the Belarusian Union of Artists, Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, as well as in private collections in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Israel. – In fact, there are many works in museum collections, – says Natalya Sharangovich, first deputy chairperson of the Belarusian Union of Artists. – It’s unique because creative association ran a little counter to the official philosophy of art, especially in the late 1980s. But it became such a popular and striking phenomenon that museum workers simply could not let it pass by. The museums acquired the works of the participants of "Nemiga-17" and now these works are quite fully represented therein.

As for the creative manner of the members of the association, it is characterized by emphasized attention to the expressiveness and symbolism of color. "Nemiga" brought to Belarusian painting an interest in expressive, rich in nuances form and metaphorical language. Actually, the name of the group itself is also symbolic. The workshop, where the idea of unification was born, was located on Nemiga Street in Minsk. But this was the name of the river that does not exist now, on the banks of which in 1067 a historical battle took place between the squads of Polotsk and Kiev princes. The first mention of the city of Mensk in ancient chronicles is also associated with the battle on the Nemiga. So, choosing a name for the association, the artists strove to emphasize their connection with the deep layers of national history and culture.

Author – Zoya Litvinova

The following fact is also important: the formation of "Nemiga" took place in the first years of perestroika, when creative workers in the republics of the former Soviet Union were concerned about the problem of national and cultural identity.

And one more thing. Nowadays it is impossible to surprise anyone with the avant-garde in the visual arts. Moreover, many young artists even overuse their not very clear attachment to this trend. But it’s very different when we evaluate the avant-garde experiments in painting or in graphics almost half a century ago. However, only in the 1980s and 1990s, the Belarusian avant-garde became an open alternative to official art.

It was then that sections started to appear in the structure of the Belarusian Union of Artists not according to the types of art, i.e. painting, graphics, sculpture, as it used to be before, but according to interests or ideological principles. This is how "Nemiga-17" appeared – an association of fans of the formal trend in art. From the catalog of 1988 for the exhibition "Nemiga-17": "Artists deny the understanding of art as an illustration of political slogans. Art cannot and should not stoop to the level of a commentator of the already ideologically comprehended – it should lead a person to comprehend new needs, form a new, tomorrow's life style ". Finally, the members of "Nemiga-17" group do not understand individuality in art as selfish, arbitrary selfexpression. According to them, individuality, as in all spheres of life, is a way of determining, creating and developing a social need.

Looking at the works of the "Nemiga" artists, one comes to the idea: of course, they are the masters! Strong, mature. Personalities – each in their own world of creative aspirations. And for all that, there is some kind of community of spirit among them.

Now they are already over sixty, and even older. In substance, I think, these are happy people: they are free to work in art the way they want. There is no pressure of authorities, no "social order" of the situation at hand, no fashion invented by someone. However, having learned about their past, one notes: the path to this freedom was long and hard. "Nemiga" is from the generation called in criticism "the seventies". Naturally, there is a psychological difference between them and art leaders of the 1960s. Circumstances deepened this difference to mutual denial. The younger ones were not attracted by the journalistic nature of works of the "sixties", mainly by the literary character of their imagery, lack of genuine interest in updating the language, which, in the opinion of representatives of the new trend, leads to a loss of the quality of plastic expression. Avoiding creative dialogue, the elders preferred the tactics of long-term and consistent displacement of the young from the public life of art. The younger ones, of course, did not want to put up with the situation of the outcast. A certain chance to defend their status in culture was given to them by the idea of "Nemiga" association. The idea, which was nationalromantic in nature, contained an incentive for original pictorial research, i.e. being highly-trained professionally in arts, to revert to the poetics of Belarusian folklore, folk art, peasant crafts. T h i s movement retained its full relevance for Belarus. The rise of the national school in the 1960s had its own characteristics. Unlike, say, Author – Nikolay Buschik Ukraine, Moldova, new trends in the country's art were fed mainly not by the centuriesold folklore heritage, but by the tragic memory of the military past. Therefore, for the fine arts, even in the 1980s, shades of white color and peasant weaving, ornaments and other plastic motifs characteristic of embroidery, traditional clay products, wood, shimmering gold of Belarusian straw retained the full power of charm... In a word, expressive symbols of folklore thinking in all their richness. At that time, the Moscow "seventies" were talking about the development of the "world museum", about the "carnival" tonality of the perception of life. Their counterparts in Minsk were rather different. One can call it an attempt of national identification. It is worth recalling that the group did not include only Belarusians: there were people from different parts of the former USSR, right up to Siberia and the Far East. The Nemiga, which retains its name from the times of "The Word

At the exhibition of "Nemiga-17" creative association members

of Igor's Campaign" – a river under one of the central quarters of modern Minsk with artists' workshops – was perceived by them as a historical, geographical and cultural symbol, with which the participants of the association connected their creative intentions.

As if listening to the movement of time, they dreamed of picturesque visions of village childhood, folklore legends reflected in paintings-songs, paintings-parables. Those were the pictures without pathetic village lovers and, moreover, without anecdotes, with which cocky Moscow primitivists delighted the audience. As a rule, the plot delicately shone through the colors, because the goal of the authors was also to understand themselves. In Minsk, a style of pictorial poetics could be born, colored, of course, by the place and time.

However, this was probably a possible, but too idyllic option. Reality decided otherwise. It happened that at the very end of the Belarusian artistic life of the Soviet era, the movement of Zoya Litvinova, Galina Gorova and Tamara Sokolova, Nikolay Buschik and Anatoly Kuznetsov with Sergey Kiryuschenko no longer found understanding either in their midst or among cultural authorities. On the contrary, the field where they lovingly hoped to grow their seedlings, began to grow violently with weeds. Souvenir consumer goods in painting, the chic lifestyle of fashionable salons rushed to exhibitions defining the style of the acquired independence with their annoying variegation.

The idealists of "Nemiga" had only one thing to do: to go in some other direction. Their new choice turned out to be critically difficult, especially since more than one decade of hard professional work was left behind. The choice was difficult for any talented artist in the post-Soviet reality, in Moscow, in Minsk, in St. Petersburg... Everything that was better or worse built by the midlife, which gave at least relative creative stability, was coming apart at the seams... Actually, the collapse of the Soviet system left for our "seventies" very little room for choice, based on the priorities that existed in the framework of foreign and domestic state of affairs, or, more simply, effective demand for their creative efforts.

This does not mean at all that they have deviated from human nature, have lost sensitivity to human life, the ability to hear and excite many of us, find support and evoke a response in the organism of a living culture. However, they approached the creative process as discoverers. They try to bring in something significant, anticipated by them, but not yet comprehended by us, not expected and not seen.

Nikolay Buschik, perhaps, stayed relatively close to the world of his early landscapes, symbolic mysteries of nature and planetary harmony. However, its pure, radiant color consonances create the impression that the earthly elements merge with the blazing of the spiritual cosmos. Galina Gorovaya is a sculptor capable of discovering the hidden soul of wood, stone or metal. The tender feeling of an intimate touch of two human beings in her work could coexist with penetration into the dumb world of animals or birds, with a unique feeling of the nature of the most amazing characters of our life. With pride, fascination and tenderness, she was able to admire the beauty of many phenomena of life, sharpening it in her plastic compositions with gorgeous color accents, based on popular perception of brightness and freshness unusual for a tired eye. This is how a special mythology of the master arises, who collects in a single circle small and large, animal and human in their unique originality.

Two more members of the group – Anatoly Kuznetsov and Leonid Khobotov – chose the method of abstraction. But, again, in their quests they are quite original. In general, the meaning of abstract-symbolic images is perceived to a certain extent, but it is almost a losing battle to describe it, because everything here is built on very fragile and subjective associations, which, moreover, float and vibrate depending on our mood. It seems that Kuznetsov is attracted by large spaces where all kinds of forces of nature soar, among which a person tries to discern the music of his/her own heart, his/her lyrical states, and the flickering of the morning landscape, and an exciting tide of form-making will. And all this – in gusts of wind, blazing color lightning, bursts, rays, and sometimes in methodical and painstaking work to curb these elements by discipline of the painted surface of the canvas. Kuznetsov's abstraction is a metaphoric presentation of the artist's life, his fantasies in a duel between the brush and the bustle of infinity outside the walls of his studio. In turn, Leonid Khobotov is a kind of architect of natural essence...

Analyzing such observations, I would like to talk about a certain philosophy of the world outlook of the masters of "Nemiga." They had to live in a difficult time, the time of collapse of the country, fortunately, not as catastrophic as it used to be before. And the support that they found for themselves in the hope for the future was the reliance on the creative elements of nature, the healthy foundations of the eternal way of human life. Each in his/her own way they keep to the ground. They do not tell naive tales, they charge and inspire their viewers with primordial earthly power. And in this work, it seems to me, the creativity of Zoya Litvinova, the most famous master of "Nemiga" community, is filled with the highest power and wisdom.

An artist of rare temperament, initially inclined to large scale concepts, Litvinova fully followed the path of spontaneous passion for the pagan power of life. Her canvases, which so often glorify scenes of a national holiday, were widely known back in the Soviet years. She also worked as a monumentalist: her tapestries based on peasant motives most likely became an appeal to a new understanding of the earthly human. Gradually, however, in the play of natural vital forces, Zoya Litvinova began to open up a higher religious meaning. Thoughts of endless complexity, contradictory diversity of the world order began to come to her mind. Zoya Litvinova even today often does not betray her favorite motive of ritual dance, which came to European art of modern times from Matisse, Picasso, Goncharova.

In these reflections, the artist finally rose to the mysticism of Christianity. To the mystery of faith, love and sacrificial death, the symbolism of the reunification of everything on earth. And here we come to one of the intimate details of the artistic language of Zoya Litvinova. Depicting holidays s well as passions, she often tells about the most complex moral and philosophical collisions in the history of mankind, shedding soft golden light on the figures depicted. Perhaps this is the radiance of faith and its love for a human. There is lofty lyricism with which the symbolic Nemiga warms her and her comrades, along the banks of which the history of previous generations was being made.

In general, the work of these artists exists in context of the modernist tradition in art. The horizons of their path can be defined with words: form, expression, spirituality.

Unlike Litvinova, almost all other members of the association today work in the space of non-objective art, at the same time maintaining fairly strong ties with reality – the main source of their impressions and creative impulses. The rejection of figurativeness was largely natural, due to the logic of the evolution of their thinking, the desire to get away from literature as a factor alien to the nature of fine arts. They strive to embody

Three different works of one author (Zoya Litvinova)

their idea of the world, using, first of all, the internal figurativeplastic resources of painting and sculpture.

Each artist, undoubtedly, had own motives and own path to making this or that decision. Nikolay Buschik in his early figurative works, to a greater extent than his other colleagues, was focused on the problem of the national and cultural identity of his own work, on the visual specificity of an everyday plot or landscape motive. In the artist's recent paintings there is a noticeable desire to expand the horizons of vision and work with the themes of a supranational nature, which today have acquired paramount importance for him, to understand himself and his work in the context of universal human values. And therefore, his search for another imagery and another language. The abstract form helped him to liberate himself, gave him not only freedom of self-expression, but also brought him to the level of a new, in his own words, specificity of artistic expression.

And even more impulsive and improvisational are the paintings by Anatoly Kuznetsov. He was one of the first in "Nemiga" to come to abstraction and distinguished himself in his methods of working with sensually plastic material. However, Kuznetsov calls his painting not abstract, but pointless, emphasizing precisely its sensual basis. In his opinion, abstract art presupposes the presence of a certain abstractly regulated concept, and this is absolutely alien to his creative nature.

Of course, for all the impulsive spontaneity, there is also a certain organizing moment in Kuznetsov's painting, that unites the plastic leitmotif. However, the alignment of color spots, the search for the rhythm of movement of "light" and "heavy" surfaces, spatial moves, and play with texture are created exclusively on an intuitive level. The artist also intuitively manifests such a quality of his creative consciousness as the creation of beauty, which, in general, he never consciously strives for, but which he values as an equivalent to excellent harmony, which has not lost in our century its deep meaning and relevance.

Sometimes strange things happen in the art world. Political technologies are increasingly penetrating its territory, blur the boundaries of art and turn it into documentation of certain phenomena and events of life, and the artist into a publicist, politician, sociologist, who is less and less interested in questions of aesthetics. The problems of form and beauty are relegated to the background, giving way to the pseudo-social pathos of discussions about the processes of the present moment.

As we can see, the artists of "Nemiga" in their search for eternal and not momentary values and truths in art and life, are again not in the mainstream. But this does not bother them any more. And not at all out of powerlessness, because swimming against the stream, maintaining the balance of mental and physical forces, is much harder and more dangerous than simply surrendering to this stream. They are very strong personalities in their views, who understand art as individual activity and individual responsibility. By the way, this tendency is beginning to be seen more and more clearly in the modern world art process, and, perhaps, it is from these positions that some new directions and new main ideas will emerge in the future. In the context of this tendency, the further paths of "Nemiga" participants are also outlined.

This is how the now well-known Belarusian artist Nikolay Buschik explains his participation in the creative association: – Then, in the eighties, art moved towards excitement. It began to offer more themes of experiences, of emotional perception of objects: the way you feel them or want to turn them into some kind of feeling. Make something blue red, combine other unusual colors. And together this will create either a drama situation, or a lyric situation, or a situation of some kind of exciting experience. Because of this, by the way, the very tasks and approaches in art changed, starting from the 1910s-1920s: let's take the work of Petrov-Vodkin, the Suprematists with Malevich, artists of the thirties, Konchalovsky... I take the art close to us, without the European one. And in Europe there were Mathis and Van Gogh, who worked adequately with their impressions and images. Of course, art has become more plastic, artists began to look for an appropriate style that would reflect the mood. And today the artist is looking for such states on the canvas with rhythms and light voltage that excite us. Of course, a lot happens at the subconscious, associative level, since the artist chooses the most active and characteristic from a range of visible, something that reflects exactly a feeling or emotion. And the audience understands it and is drawn to such fine art. They say: "This really looks alike." The creative imagination begins to awaken in them together with the artist. This gives them more pleasure than looking just at a particular object or a real landscape. Hence, a completely different direction in color is born, where art begins

to acquire a style. Each artist develops own style, which helps him/her to create space the way he/she sees and understands it. This is how artists differ from each other. – Still, how would you define your own style? – I can certainly give an explanation to myself. Although a more capacious designation will someday be given by art critics. Or some of the art lovers. In my works, I strive for what ultimately creates a feeling of joy and tranquility, a mood that brings a person into good, life-affirming harmony.

Yes, Nikolay Buschik hasn’t not changed in his work over the years. This is how he formulates his contemporary creative credo: – It seems to me that today artists are divided into two directions in creativity. Some work for black, and the others for light. I work for light. I am interested in what my homeland is in its wonderful creation of God. Everything bad – bad moods, bad deeds – we build it ourselves. All our displeasure is caused only by the inconsistency of our desires with what is happening, that's all. Why, who needs it? Everyone should cope with oneself, and with the blackness within oneself. In my work, I would like to assert beauty, harmony, purity of morning and evening, summer shower or wonderful winter snowfall. And when it is obtained, I'm delighted. They are different – members of the creative association "Nemiga", veterans of the Belarusian avant-garde. They express their thoughts and feelings in their works in different ways. They are individual – and this is what arouses interest in them.

In the Belarusian art, in general, there is a strong influence of such a phenomenon as "artistic community", rich in formal or figurative research and experiments. The artistic avant-garde manifested itself in painting, architecture, design, music, theater and cinema. It influenced the entire lifestyle of the 20th century. That is why the comprehension of the art and culture of Belarus in its avant-garde manifestations remains relevant now, in the 21st century, as the comprehension of the origins of modern culture.

Veniamin Mikheev Photo credit: author

During exhibition

VIKTOR MIKHAYLOV

This is autumn in October. In one of the capital's parks.

БЕЛАРУСЬ ЧАСОПІС ДЛЯ ВАС Беларусь. Belarus ISSN 0320-7544 №8 (1055), ЖНІВЕНЬ, 2021

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