Портрет Шастоковича (Portrait of Shastokovich) 

Boris Alexandrovich Chetkov (1926-2010)

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

Publications:

Across All Barriers, Dr. Alexander Borovsky, Pushkin Group, Ltd. 2005, Page 59, Plate 41

Boris Chetkov - Portraitist, Dr. Alexander Borovsky, Pushkin Group, Ltd. 2008, Page 37, Plate 14

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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

Publications:

Across All Barriers, Dr. Alexander Borovsky, Pushkin Group, Ltd. 2005, Page 59, Plate 41

Boris Chetkov - Portraitist, Dr. Alexander Borovsky, Pushkin Group, Ltd. 2008, Page 37, Plate 14

‍

Boris Chetkov (1926-2010)

During the post-war period, at a time when the Russian avant-garde was demonized in the Soviet Union as formalist and bourgeois, Chetkov resurrected many of their techniques. His works share the deliberate ‘unsophistication’ of Primitivist or folk art, the abstraction and spirituality of Kandinsky and the romantic whimsical view of peasant life as pioneered by Chagall.

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