THE COLLECTED WORKS OF BORIS CHETKOV
DISCOVERING CHETKOV
In 2001, researcher and collector Kenneth Pushkin was introduced to the artist, Boris Chetkov, at his modest studio dwelling in the heart of St. Petersburg, Russia. Immediately he recognized that this was the discovery of an enormous talent, with his entire life body of work intact and largely untouched over a period of five decades. The two shared their adventurous stories and quickly became friends, and so it was that Kenneth began his journey of collecting Chetkov’s works along with documenting the compelling tale of his dramatic life journey.
Kenneth’s search for Russia’s postwar art treasures began in the early 1990s during his many trips to Russia, the land of his own ancestry During this time, he established the bilateral (Russia / U.S.) non-profit Pushkin Fund: www.pushkinfund.com. The goodwill of the fund opened doors to the highest levels of the Russian cultural community, and importantly, to leading museum directors.
It was during this period of flourishing cultural exchange with the West, that Kenneth, with the help of the Director of the State Russian Museum, was uniquely positioned to take advantage of such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
With the support of the Russian Ministry of Culture, the notoriously difficult process of exportation was waived, and express permission was granted to ship the collected works to the U.S. in a series of large tranches over a period of years.
Such is the history of the acquisition of the works of Boris Chetkov and the valuable provenance of the collection.
As the years have gone by, time and research have shown that entire curated collections of the most important and beautiful works of this period are virtually non-existent, making the Chetkov collection (with 400 paintings) extraordinary.
Chetkov’s life and his works, in all of their unconventional brilliance, trace the history of the Soviet Era from Stalin through the collapse of the USSR and into the 21st century. While his creative path cast him as an outsider, a loner and a rebel, he was finally, in the last year of his life, 2010, recognized as a national treasure and honored with the first one man exhibition ever held at the Presidential Palace in Konstantinovsky.
Chetkov will be seen in history as being among the most significant artists of this era. His body of work was without peers in Russia during the Postwar period but can be compared to the most celebrated and valued painters in the West, such as Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Phillip Guston, and Joan Mitchell, among others.
BORIS ALEXANDROVICH CHETKOV
Born October 27, 1926, to a family of successful peasant farmers in the small town of Novaya Lyalya in the Northern Urals, Boris Chetkov enjoyed a sunny early childhood. There the peasant world dominated, and Chetkov’s memories, warm and clear, are colored by the peasant way of life imbuing his paintings with a simple power.
Boris’s teen years were turbulent, reflecting the dramatic social and economic changes that came with the advent of Josef Stalin. At 13, he was unjustly arrested and served a sentence as a logger at the infamous Gulag Archipelago before being assigned to the front lines of WWII as part of a ‘penal’ battalion from which few survived.
Despite the chaos of his life, Chetkov’s inner drive towards creativity was insurmountable. An accomplished, academically trained painter, Chetkov’s early works in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s were still lifes and landscapes. A student of the Leningrad Art College and a graduate of Sverdlovsk Art College he very soon moved to abstraction. At great risk to himself during this very restrictive period in Soviet Russia, Boris unwittingly became a pioneering artist. Never part of any trend or group, his special intellect and fondness for abstract painting cast him as an outsider.
Throughout the 1960s Chetkov carved out a path of his own, laying down several lines of work reflecting his emerging philosophy. Invoking classical, mythological and biblical themes, he channeled his spiritual and emotional energy into myriad subjects including genre scenes, musicians, horses, portraits, still lifes, landscapes and pure abstract expressionism. These lines raised their voices throughout his whole career.
The 1970s saw his expressionism bloom most powerfully and he continued to paint without boundaries. He became a mystic and a hypnotist with color, drawing the viewer into the emotion of his paintings. Energy flows and texture played a major role in his work.
Chetkov simply painted what he breathed, that which formed the very substance of his being. As the years went by he became extremely prolific and his work flowed out in a powerful, passionate and inspired stream.
Boris Chetkov passed in September, 2010, but not before he was honored with the first one man exhibit at the Presidential Palace in Konstantinovsky. He had come full circle and had never compromised his integrity. It wasn’t in his nature. In spite of the hardship and artistic isolation that life had delivered, he stayed his course with a remarkably positive attitude, as is evident when viewing his compellingly beautiful and fascinating works.
Acrylic on Panel,1994, 32 × 40 inches (80 cm × 100 cm)
Our family moved to Kazakhstan in the spring of 1941. Narrow streets, camels, exotic sounds and vibrant colours all around, noisy markets with plenty of bric-a-brac on sale. I was enchanted by this world, and spent all my time at the market, drawing everything I saw around me.
Boris Chetkov
In My Own Words (Autobiography)
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Портрет Шостаковича (Portrait of Shostakovich)
Oil on Canvas, 1955, 26 ×19 inches (65 cm × 48 cm)
In the portraits of musicians the artist constructs visual characterization of his sitters through analogy with music. He perceives the sitter’s music as a drama of extreme emotional tensions ”
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Мальчик (Portrait of a Boy)
Oil on Paper, 1956,12 × 8.5 inches (30 cm × 22 cm)
The immediacy, confidence and color sense of Chetkov’s early works in the mid ‘50s distinguish him as a harbinger of action painting and postwar Expressionism.
Dr. Albert Kostenevich
Keeper of Impressionist Paintings
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Петухи дерутся (Roosters Fight)
Oil on Panel, 1959, 28 × 20 inches (50 cm × 70 cm)
The recurring theme of animals in Chetkov’s pictures serves to remind us of the significance of his upbringing in a small farming village in the Northern Ural Mountains. In one of his earliest collected works entitled, Roosters Fight, the chaos of the raging birds is delivered with a swirling dynamism, as the violently splayed feathers fly in rhythmic brushstrokes and colors upon a rich, earthy ochre background. When Chetkov painted this in 1956, he may have been reflecting on the sudden, dramatic events and turmoil of his childhood in the early 1930s, when Stalin’s collectivization transformed his secure farm life into one of chaos and constant movement
Kenneth Pushkin
Russian Postwar Researcher and Collector
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Композиции (Composition) Oil on Panel, 1965, 14 × 20 inches (35 cm × 50 cm)
Пейзаж (Landscape) Oil on Panel, 1964, 14 × 17 inches (35 cm × 43 cm)
Пейзаж (Landscape) Oil on Panel, 1960, 12 × 18 inches (30 cm × 45 cm)
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Натюрморт с ирисами (Still life with Irises)
Acrylic on Canvas 1969, 24 × 20 inches (60 cm × 50 cm)
The richly saturated color anchored by the eye-smacking blues and highlighted by splashes of brilliant whites and jewel tones creates the full range of effects depth as well as flatness, contours as well as planes, the substantive as well as the illusory evoking a visceral sense of joy
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Зеленый
с цветами (Green Meadow with Flowers)
Oil on Panel,1969,12 ×12 inches (30 cm × 30 cm)
Chetkov grew up in rural Russia, far away from the major urban centers. As a child, he was exposed to the peasant art of the ex-serf population who would hand paint dolls, embroider linen and create religious imagery for local churches Expressions of his early life are encapsulated in works such as Green Meadow with Flowers, in which the artist approaches his rural, pastoral vision with raw emotion and spontaneous action.
Theodora Clarke
Russian Art Scholar
The Courtauld Institute of Art,London
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Все в желтом (Everything in Yellow) Oil on Panel,1969, 14 × 20 inches (35 cm × 50 cm)
A key theme throughout Chetkov’s work is his raw and emotional response to the natural and physical world. Chetkov strives to capture the emotional and dynamic essence of his subject. He engages with the environment on a conscious and subconscious level and once said: “ I think that the artist must feel nature, not copy nature ” In his autobiography Chetkov does not cite any specific artists or movements as a direct influence on his work Nevertheless, we can see visual parallels between his work and that of his predecessors. His art is imbued with their spirit as we have seen with icons, folk art and the Russian avant-garde.
Kenneth Pushkin
Russian Postwar Researcher and Collector
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
(White Cloud of Apple Blossoms)
Oil on Canvas, 1969, 32 × 36 inches (80 cm × 90 cm)
Chetkov creates fantastical colourscapes, where the natural world is depicted as constructed patches of colours, ignoring conventional perspective. White Cloud of Apple Blossoms, is exemplary of this process, conveying the warm woodland homestead enveloped in richly textured blues and greens, setting the stage for the main event an explosion of brilliant pink apple blossoms in the center, imbuing the work with a distinct lyricism and mood.
Theodora Clarke
Russian Art Scholar
The Courtauld Institute of Art,London
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Игра черных шаров (Game of Black Balls)
Oil on Paper, 1969, 28 × 20 inches (70 cm × 50 cm)
Throughout Chetkov’s oeuvre he returns to games of chance, to the possibilities of the unknown, reflecting on his own creative, risk taking process.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
The horse plays a prominent role in Chetkov’s oeuvre, symbolizing youth, freedom and the flight of time, always conveying a sense of energy and animation. He related closely with Kandinsky who famously noted, “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations to the soul.”
Theodora Clarke Russian Art Scholar
BORIS CHETKOV: EARLY ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1955 1970
Черная
(Black Moon Above the City)
Oil on Panel,1970,14 × 20 inches (35 cm × 50 cm)
With a haunting and penetrating stare, this mysterious 1970 work caters to the imagination with its demanding presence and sense of intrigue.The immediacy and action of Chetkov’s paintings reflect his emotions and subconscious influences at any given moment.
Kenneth Pushkin
Russian Postwar Researcher and Collector
BORIS CHETKOV: THE FALL OF THE USSR 1989 1991
The period of Glasnost (openness) initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, heralded the end of the Soviet Era, and along with it the repressive oversight of artistic freedom. Seventy years of strict totalitarian rule crumbled, giving way to a sense of liberation among the creative and intellectual community.
Boris Chetkov was among those inspired by this refreshing gust of hope. Under the Soviet regime he had suffered a life of displacement, imprisonment, and war. As an abstract artist and free thinker, he had been ostracized by his peers and was denied honorable status by the Official Union of Soviet Artists.
Now, he would celebrate!
In one of the most prolific periods of his long career, Chetkov, in his 60s and going strong, painted with an unfettered level of energy and confidence. With adventurous color palettes and larger surfaces allowing for more movement, he subconsciously created a parallel narrative to the unfolding events and social changes with titles such as Sea of Gold, Fantasy Island, Picnic, Wild Horses and the like.
Throughout his life, Chetkov viewed his paintings as a spontaneous channel of consciousness to capture and release his emotions, which, as seen during the fall of the USSR, were inherently reflective of the world around him. WW
(Male Portrait) Oil on Panel, 1989, 32 × 24 inches (80 cm × 60 cm)
BORIS CHETKOV: THE FALL OF THE USSR 1989 1991
Композиция (Composition)
Oil on Canvas, 1989, 40 × 51inches (100 cm × 128 cm)
The speed with which Chetkov executed his action paintings, the hot improvisational rush of the strokes, marks and drips instantly register as coherent and intelligible when they encounter the canvas surface.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
BORIS
CHETKOV: THE FALL OF THE USSR 1989 1991
Коррида (Corrida)
Acrylic on Canvas, 1990, 24 × 32 inches (60 cm × 80 cm)
The years 1989 to 1991 were characterized by a series of expressive action paintings by Chetkov, reflecting his jubilation during the collapse of the USSR, a regime which had been oppressive to him throughout his life. Corrida is exemplary of this period. The immediacy of brush strokes, the open rhythm of counterclockwise movement (seen in many of his works) and the contrasting juxtaposed colors evoke a range of emotions and interpretations for the viewer and provide insight to the artists’ subconscious commentary.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
BORIS
CHETKOV: THE FALL OF THE USSR 1989 1991
Брачный
(Mating Call)
Acrylic on Canvas, 1990, 28 × 35 inches (70 cm × 88 cm)
Under the Soviet regime Chetkov had suffered a life of displacement, imprisonment, and war. As an abstract artist and free thinker, he had been ostracized by his peers and was denied honorable status by the Official Union of Soviet Artists.
Now, with the fall of the USSR, he would celebrate!
Between 1989 and 1991, in one of the most prolific periods of his long career, Chetkov, in his 60s and going strong, painted with an unfettered level of energy and confidence.
With adventurous color palettes and larger surfaces allowing for more movement, he subconsciously created a parallel narrative to the unfolding events and social changes around him.
Theodora Clarke Russian Art Scholar
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Падение Фаэтона (Fall of Phaeton)
Миграция пингвинов (Penguin Migration) >
The years 1989 to 1991 were characterized by a series of expressive action paintings by Chetkov, reflecting his jubilation during the collapse of the USSR, a regime which had been oppressive to him throughout his life. Penguin Migration is exemplary of this period.
The immediacy of brush strokes, the open rhythm of counterclockwise movement (seen in many of his works) and the contrasting juxtaposed colors evoke a range of emotions and interpretations for the viewer and provide insight to the artists’ sub-conscious commentary.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Фантастический остров (Fantasy Island)
Acrylic on Canvas, 1991, 32 × 32 inches (80 cm × 80 cm)
Рождество (Christmas) >
Acrylic on Canvas, 1989, 39 × 32 inches (98 cm × 80 cm)
Boris Chetkov, the stand-alone pioneer of Abstract Expressionism in Russia, living behind a cultural iron curtain, somehow came to the same conclusions as his celebrated western contemporaries, Willem de Kooning and Frank Auerbach, among others.
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
Женская
The dream state is transitional, borderline, uniting both shores of life. Images representing this state might be purely abstract, or retain some sense of the depiction of the figure, and accumulations of inner tensions and emotional experiences.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
BORIS CHETKOV
Acrylic on Canvas, 2002, 28 × 31inches (70 cm × 78 cm)
In the later years of his life Chetkov to his dacha nearby the ancient village of Staraya Ladoga. There he painted many iterations of the surrounding environs. These landscape paintings show Chetkov’s attention to mood with an emotional and lyrical intensity. Many of the views were executed in one sitting, recreating the atmosphere of real geographical places through experimentation with color and form.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
Африканец (African)
Acrylic on Canvas, 1985, 26 × 20 inches (65 cm × 50 cm)
Such tempo, such reactivity of the portrait painting reveals the impulse of penetration into the sitter’s character, and provokes a viewer’s reaction to this call from a human individuality: search for contact, the spark of understanding.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
Певица поёт (The Singer Singing)
Acrylic on Panel, 1987, 26 × 20 inches (65 cm × 50 cm)
Chetkov’s portraits can be grouped according to “temperature.”
They deal above all with psycho-types, with the psyche as dynamic process. The painting literally sparks forth from this process.
The viewer too receives this energy of contact, provoking a reaction, the spark of understanding. Such an approach predetermines the nature of the portrait painting, what might be called its reactivity.
The need for just such simultaneous painting, just such action, just such tempo is sensed by the viewer.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
Театр (Theatre)
There are hints at images of musical instruments and performers within the complex color-rhythmic fabric of the canvas.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
Oil on Panel, 1987, 20 × 16 inches (50 cm × 40 cm)
The dream state is transitional, borderline, uniting both shores of life. Images representing this state might be purely abstract, or retain some sense of the depiction of the figure, revealing accumulations of inner tensions and emotional experiences.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
(Woman in a Chariot )
Acrylic on Canvas, 1998, 24 × 28 inches (60 cm × 70 cm)
Chetkov’s works pour out in a passionate, powerful and inspired stream! Biblical stories, classical myths and mysteries, metamorphoses of the totalitarian and individualist consciousness and the basic archetypes of civilization all find color, form and emotion upon his canvas.
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Chief Curator of Contemporary Art State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
SELECTED CHETKOVS THROUGH THE YEARS
Бег (Run)
Acrylic on Canvas, 2002, 37 × 29 inches (92 cm × 72 cm)
Chetkov strove to explore and communicate the unique colour relationships in the world around him. He once wrote, “I wallow in nature’s colour relationships.” He related closely with Kandinsky who famously noted, “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibrations to the soul.
Theodora Clarke Russian Art Scholar The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Chetkov’s landscapes are often far removed from the joyless collective farms of the Soviet Era. Nostalgia embellishes a memory from his happy childhood, before the travails of being torn from his ancestral home and subjected to forced labor during Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’ of the 1930s. Dreamlike and hallucinatory, the painting is exemplary of the strong fauvist tendencies seen in many of Chetkov’s landscapes, portraits and still lifes.
RESOURCES
Pushkin Group Publications on Boris Chetkov:
Boris Chetkov: Across All Barriers, 2006
Dr. Alexander Borovsky, Dr. Albert Kostenevich
Boris Chetkov, Portraitist, 2008
Dr. Alexander Borovsky, Dr. Albert Kostenevich
100 Masterworks, 2012
Dr. Alexander Borovsky
Re-Imagining Russia: Landscape and Genre Paintings of Boris Chetkov, 2013
Theodora Clarke
The Chetkov Papers
Autobiography and Interview, 2009
pushkincollection.com borischetkov.com pushkinfund.com
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Chetkov
Editor’s Note:
The term ‘Panel’ as used herein (Oil on Panel / Acrylic on Panel refers to works on archival art board panels or canvas panel board, which have been utilized as a traditional surface for Russian painters over the past 100 years. Each work on panel is reversibly mounted to a 4-ply acid free cotton rag board, then adhered to a 3/4” (1.9 cm) kiln dried basswood strainer — in keeping with museum standards.
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