A married couple from the Moscow region paints still lifes in four hands

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Still life is a relatively young genre in the visual arts. Its history goes back almost six centuries. It is amazing and interesting because it makes people see beauty and harmony in the everyday, boring things around us. And today in our virtual gallery are paintings dedicated to this genre, performed by contemporary artists from the Moscow region Konstantin Miroshnik and Natalia Kurguzova-Miroshnikwho together paint impressive still lifes that catch the eye of even a very discerning viewer.

- Konstantin Miroshnik once said at the opening of one of his personal exhibitions.

You can find out more about the tandem of already well-known Russian painting masters in our article: As a tandem of two talented painters, he created a family idyll and paints delightful pictures in four hands.

A few words from the history of still life

It just so happened historically that since ancient times people endowed the world of objects created by their own hands with human properties, as if trying to spiritualize the inanimate material. In European art, this served as a manifestation of a special genre in painting dedicated to the life of things - still life.

In still life, over the centuries, artists have learned to depict not only ordinary or antique things, but also to reproduce on canvas how they, these things, live, speak, communicate with each other and with us, the audience. No one will argue that communication with a work of art of any genre is, first of all, a dialogue between the author and the viewer.

After all, paintings can express with color, line, rhythm, and manner of execution that which is beyond the control of human speech. Her tacit visual narration speaks no less eloquently than the words addressed to the ear.

By the way, in medieval Holland this genre was called stilleven, which meant “quiet life”, but we all know this definition better as “still life” - “dead nature”.

Curiously, the painters created their first still lifes, subordinating an almost unchanged composition, a set of "portrayed" objects and meaning. As a rule, these were: bread, a glass of wine, fruit, fish. Moreover, all the objects in them were of a symbolic nature: the fish is a symbol of Jesus Christ; knife - a symbol of the victim; lemon - a symbol of unquenched thirst; a few nuts in a shell - a soul bound by sin; the apple reminded of the fall; wine or grapes - a symbol of Blood; bread is a symbol of the Flesh of Christ. The depiction of these objects in the paintings was rather a reminder of the Last Supper, which gives life to humanity, a sermon on salvation.

However, over time, artists began to fill their still life performances with a wider assortment of earthly goods created both by nature and by the hands of people: carpet tablecloths, silver cups, clay, glass and wood products. Simple food was replaced by a variety of marine and terrestrial fauna, pickles and exotic fruits.

So, magnificently written canvases and saturated with abundance, they have already begun to speak with their images about the futility of human life, about the sinful love of earthly wealth. Already these still lifes silently began to remind of Belshazzar's feast, leading to a deathly end. There was also such a thing in the works of artists where the glass fell and the wine spilled - this was interpreted as the world - wins.

Still lifes of Konstantin Miroshnik and Natalia Kurguzova-Miroshnik

But let's return to the heroes of our today's review and talk a little about their amazing works that make you literally enjoy what you see. As mentioned in the previous review, the tandem creates his works in two styles - academicism and impressionism. Each of the co-authors writes in their own handwriting, which gives the canvases a special zest. Being the best students of Ilya Glazunov, Konstantin and Natalia, at the dawn of their youth, found each other not only as a man and a woman, but also as co-authors.

Even at the Academy, they realized that they were looking at the world from one angle. And then the realization came that they could not only live without each other, but also create.

It should be noted that for Konstantin and Natalia, still life is not only a desire to touch the best traditions of Dutch, Flemish and Russian art of this genre. The artists masterfully created something of their own, unique in its sound in terms of composition, color, luminosity and semantic meaning.

This genre has become very close to them. It is here that Konstantin and Natalia seem to let through the entire color gamut and luminous beauty of the objective world, inspired by man, the generosity and diversity of the gifts of Mother Nature and the creations of human hands.

When creating their own, so to speak, lyrical still lifes, the masters are very scrupulous in their compositional solution. They group various objects on canvas, starting from natural colors and shapes, the texture of utensils, fruits and draperies. The environment is often chosen as the background, that is, the natural landscape. The masters use to a superlative degree the gradation of light and shade, its subtlest pictorial shades. Every atmospheric canvas of artists is literally saturated with an air environment, in the form of a light haze.

The spouses, working in four hands, bring another important feature to their still lifes - the life of things in their works is always connected with the life of a person. The invisible presence of a person is palpable in everything: in a peeled apple, in a cut lemon peel, and in an accidentally overturned glass of wine.

And finally, I would like to say that the fragile life of the so-called "inanimate" nature, on the canvases of the heroes of our review, is thoroughly saturated with pictorial poetry, anxious love for the beauty of the objective world, as an integral part of human life, as well as the extraordinary skill of two talented artists of our time … It seems that they will still delight fans and connoisseurs of their work with new achievements and finds.

In the video you can see the best works of Konstantin and Natalia in various genres.

Continuing the theme of contemporary artists working in the genre of still life, read our review dedicated to the work of Marina Zakharova: An artist from the Russian hinterland paints floral still lifes of divine beauty