creativity
Valentin Gubarev:
"Art should be rough. Everything slips off the glossy surface..." Valentin Gubarev is one of the most famous contemporary Belarusian artists. His name is well known to connoisseurs of fine arts both in the country and abroad. Critics call him "Belarusian Bruegel", one of the albums of the popular series "The Best Contemporary Artists" is dedicated to his work. The fact that the prestigious French gallery Gallerie Berthéas Les Tournesols has an exclusive contract with him for many years is evidence of the recognition of Valentin Gubarev's work in Western Europe.
The main theme of Valentin Gubarev's work, which was confirmed by his recent personal exhibition at the National Art Museum, is the everyday life of ordinary people. Provincial cities and towns, narrow streets with low-rise buildings, small courtyards and small, simply furnished rooms, people going about their everyday affairs or indulging in simple human joys. But the artist's everyday scenes are not a naturalistic description of everyday life. Gubarev's works are made in a naive, almost cheap popular print manner, the figures of people, their gestures and postures look grotesque, the colors are bright and juicy. All this creates an atmosphere of celebration, reveries, dreams, even phantasmagoria. Living an ordinary everyday life, the characters of Gubarev's paintings – simple, unremarkable people – subconsciously dream of something bigger, of some better, wonderful life. And the author shows us these dreamers with sincere warmth and kind irony. Valentin Gubarev's work is often referred to as naive painting. But his works are by no means "naive" in the ordinary sense of the word. Apparent innocence is a form with which a peculiar "Gubarev" atmosphere of romance is created in everyday life, capable of attracting viewers of varying degrees of sophistication in art. But the impeccable accuracy and consistency of style, the richness of the content of each work speak of the high professional skill of the author. In the works of Gubarev there is no folk primitive painting stylization, the "naivety" here
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is deeply thought out and masterfully built. In general, Gubarev's plots consist of many carefully written small details. But at the same time, the composition of each work remains internally integral and harmonious. Paintings by Valentin Gubarev can evoke a variety of feelings in different viewers: someone feels nostalgic memories, someone feels irony, laughter, surprise or delight, a feeling of emotion, and someone, perhaps, can be led to serious reflections on the meaning of human existence... Of course, personal exhibition of Valentin Gubarev at the National Art
Valentin Gubarev was born in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) on April 14, 1948. He studied at Gorky Art School, and then at the Faculty of Graphics of Moscow Polygraphic Institute. Since 1975 he has been living and working in Minsk. He is a member of the Belarusian Union of Artists. Honorary Member of the Artistic Association "Masterpiece" (Würzburg, Germany). Since 1994 he has had an exclusive contract with the Gallerie Berthéas Les Tournesols (France). Since 2005 participates in auctions Christie's (London), DrouotRichelieu (Paris), Kinsky (Vienna). Personal exhibitions were successfully held in many European countries. V. Gubarev's works are in the Museum of Art of St. Petersburg, the Zimmerli Art Museum (USA), the ProArt Gallery (UAE) and other museums, as well as in numerous private collections in Belarus, Russia, USA, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Japan, Israel and other countries
Museum of Belarus is a large-scale event that made it possible to get to know the artist's work better. Yes, he writes such familiar everyday life, filled with warm images from childhood. An atmosphere of sincerity, romance and dreams reigns in his paintings, which involuntarily makes you smile. Gubarev's canvases, solved with ease and kind irony, have a different effect on the audience: someone plunges into memories, someone laughs heartily at the plots, and someone begins to reflect on the eternal. Today the Belarusian artist Valentin Gubarev is famous, independent, and, as his colleagues believe, successful. It all started with an ordinary phone call from Moscow 20 years ago. Valentin then picked up the phone, and a pleasant female voice asked him if the artist Gubarev was still alive. Then, when he met with the French, owners of the famous gallery, everything fell into place. It turned out that they accidentally (whether by chance?) got a small catalog on inferior paper with his paintings. The works of an unknown artist from Minsk surprised and interested them. A not very burdensome contract was offered, which he signed when he started working. Valentin usually tells all this with a smile, in which there is surprise, and joy, and a light, subtle irony. He is a great storyteller, observant, impartial to himself: – Some critics write about me: "The main feature of his work is to see the nontrivial in the banal." But this is probably really so. It is interesting for me to look into a small courtyard, a non-parade entrance,
