Oil painting Portrait of a girl Oleg Arkadievich Sokolov

№Vern 839


*** ABOUT THIS PAINTING ***
* TITLE: "Portrait of a girl"
* ARTISTS: Oleg Arkadievich Sokolov
* SIZE: 42x31 cm/'16.53x12.20 inches', frame size: 75x56 cm/'29.52x22.04 inches'
* MEDIUM: cardboard
* HAND PAINTED: Original painting from our collection
* CONDITION: we tried to convey the maximum information with the help of photos about this product
* This item was auctioned in Kiev auction

About the artist: Oleg Sokolov grew up in a family of hereditary intellectuals. From 1935 to 1939 he studied at the Odessa Art School. He studied under Theophilus Fraerman, an artist who belonged to both the Odessa "Independents" and the Paris school, who were friends and exhibited with Rouault, Chagall, Matisse (O. Sokolov's notes about conversations with the teacher remained).

From 1940 to 1946 he served in the Red Army, fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, was seriously wounded in 1941.

From 1947 to 1948 he studied at the Lviv Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts. From 1948 to 1951 he again studied at the Odessa Art School and worked as an artist at the Odessa car assembly plant. From 1948 to 1951 he worked at the Odessa Association of Artists. From 1955 until the last days of his life he worked as a research assistant, then head. exposition in the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art.

Oleg Sokolov created graphic cycles, being carried away by op-art, abstraction, looking for connections between color, composition and music. His searches in art, continuing the path laid by the world of art, passed the fascination with the graphics of Beardsley and Vasarelli, Rops and Japanese prints, and anticipated the searches of the nonconformists of the 70s, the conceptualists of the 80s ... Since the 1950s, he has been actively experimenting with abstraction. Rhythmic combinations of geometrical figures of different sizes are dynamic and expressive. At the same time, his monotypes are created - free streams of color spots dictated by associations. A special place for him was occupied by music, the picturesque vision of Schubert, Bach, Wagner, Stravinsky, Scriabin. Continuing the tradition of synesthetic understanding of color, word and sound, he started from the ideas of Kandinsky, Malevich, and was influenced by Rudolf Steiner and Vladimir Vernadsky. Created the international club "Color, Music, Word" named after Čiurlionis.

As Evgeny Golubovsky recalls: “he was the only artist in Odessa who did not shy away from political struggle, who made an anti-Stalinist fresco on the wall of his apartment. On the days when they tried to demolish the church, I stood with a placard "We will not let the church be demolished!" Until the days when I brought the letter to the editor - a protest against rampant anti-Semitism. "

The work of Oleg Sokolov, who for many years was breaking dogmas in full view, attracted scientists, poets, and philosophers. “... a field of intellectual and moral freedom constantly existed around him ... In the 70s, Oleg Sokolov achieved a synthesis of all the methods and techniques used, his works became more and more complex and unpredictable. He managed to compare the boundless material world with the cosmos of feelings. This ability to “hear” feelings, “see” the spiritual life of each object is felt in its best works, ”said the director of the museum, Semyon Kantor, when opening Oleg Sokolov's hall at the Odessa Museum of Modern Art.

Since 1955, Oleg Sokolov has shown his works to friends, since 1961 his apartment has become an exhibition space or a concert hall every Wednesday. In 1956, he showed his works in the hall of the Writers' Union, after which an article by F. Shapochnikov was published in the Odessa newspaper Znamya Kommunizma (28.10.1956), a quote from which characterizes that time: “Odessa artist O. Sokolov, expressing in his work a fundamental disagreement with the method of socialist realism. Denying this method, the artist contrasts with it essentially subjectivist and formalistic art, in particular, surrealism. Striving to be at all costs different from others, chasing a falsely understood novelty and originality, obeying the whims of fantasy, he almost does not recognize reality ... Who understands such art, who needs such “novelty” and “originality”, except for aesthetes and jaded people? The people, the majority, do not need it anyway. "

Such persecution accompanied any show of Oleg Sokolov's works for many years. Nevertheless, there were exhibitions - in the editorial office of Komsomolskaya Iskra, in the Odessa House of Scientists, as well as unofficial “apartment exhibitions” of Odessa artists.