27.09.2011 22:00

More and more often there are announcements about upcoming exhibitions of the artist of naive art. Today we will try to figure out what it is naive art.

Firstly, I dare to suggest that all fine art originates from naive art. After all, when there was no classical school, the laws of painting were not derived. There were stories and there were people who wanted to capture these moments on canvas or any other material. If you think about it, the first cave paintings of primitive man are also naive art.

Secondly, any artist, when he picks up pencils and brushes for the first time, simply begins to depict on a sheet of paper what he sees around him. Not obeying the laws of logic and painting, the hand itself leads the line where it needs to go. And this is how painting is born. Experience and knowledge come later, but one way or another everyone goes through this stage. But why then do some remain at this stage?

Let's try to turn to the definition and history of naive art. Naive art (from English naive art) is the style of creativity of amateur artists who have not received professional education. This concept is often used as a synonym for primitivism, but in the latter we are more likely talking about professional imitation of a non-professional one. Historical roots naive art - originate in folk art.

But at present there are many artists working in this direction who have received very good art education. But they continue to write childish, uncomplicated plots. At the same time, a “naive” artist differs from a “non-naive” one, just as a healer differs from a doctor of medical sciences: both are specialists, each in his own way.

For the first time, naive art declared itself in 1885, when the paintings of Henri Rousseau, nicknamed the Customs Officer, as he was a customs officer by profession, were shown at the Salon of Independent Artists in Paris. Subsequently, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Morshans - first Alfred Jarry, then Guillaume Apollinaire, and soon Bernheim, Wilhelm Houdet, Ambroise Vollard and Paul Guillaume - began to attract public attention not only to the works of Rousseau the Customs Officer, but also to the works of other primitivists and self-taught people. The first exhibition of naive art was held in 1937 in Paris - it was called “People's Masters of Reality”. Along with the works of Rousseau the Customs Officer, works of workers and artisans Louis Viven, Camille Bombois, Andre Beauchamp, Dominique-Paul Peyronet, Seraphine Louis, nicknamed Seraphin of Senlis, Jean Eve, René Rambert, Adolphe Dietrich, as well as Maurice Utrillo, son of Suzanne, were exhibited here Valadon.

With all this, it should be noted that many avant-garde artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, Kandinsky and Brancusi, paid Special attention art of children and the insane. Chagall showed interest in the work of self-taught people, Malevich turned to Russian popular prints, and the naive occupied a special place in the work of Larionov and Goncharova. Largely thanks to the techniques and images of naive art, success accompanied the displays of works by Kabakov, Bruskin, Komar and Melamid.

Creation naive artists like one of the layers contemporary art requires serious and thoughtful study, in which there can be no place for superficial and extreme judgments, often found in everyday life. It is either idealized and exalted, or viewed with a hint of disdain. And this is due primarily to the fact that in Russian (as well as in some other) languages ​​the term “naive, primitive” has one of the main evaluative (and precisely negative) meanings.

The fundamental difference between this direction of fine art and children's art lies in its deep sacredness, traditionalism and canonicity. Childhood naivety and spontaneity of worldview seem to have frozen forever in this art, its expressive forms and elements artistic language filled with sacred-magical significance and cult symbolism, which has a fairly stable field of irrational meanings. In children's art they are very mobile and do not carry a cultic load. Naive art, as a rule, is optimistic in spirit, life-affirming, multifaceted and diverse, and most often has a fairly high aesthetic significance. In contrast, the art of the mentally ill, often close to it in form, is characterized by a painful obsession with the same motives, a pessimistic-depressive mood, and a low level of artistry. Works of naive art are extremely diverse in form and individual style, but many of them are characterized by the absence linear perspective(many primitivists strive to convey depth with the help of different scales of figures, a special organization of shapes and color masses), flatness, simplified rhythm and symmetry, active use of local colors, generalization of forms, emphasizing the functionality of the object due to certain deformations, increased significance of the contour, simplicity techniques. Primitivist artists of the 20th century, who are familiar with classical and contemporary professional art, often come up with interesting and original artistic solutions when trying to imitate certain techniques of professional art in the absence of appropriate technical knowledge and skills.

Nadezhda Podshivalova. Dancing under the first light bulb in the village. 2006 Canvas. Fiberboard. Oil.

Representatives of naive art most often take their subjects from the life around them, folklore, religious mythology or their own imagination. It is easier for them than many professional artists to achieve spontaneous, intuitive creativity, not hampered by cultural and social rules and prohibitions. As a result, original, surprisingly pure, poetic and sublime artistic worlds arise, in which a certain ideal naive harmony between nature and man reigns.

They understand life as a “golden age”, because for them the world is harmony and perfection. For them, there is no history as a constantly ongoing process, and time in it is turned into an endless circle, where the coming tomorrow will be as radiant as the past yesterday. And it doesn’t matter that the life lived was hopelessly difficult, dramatic, and sometimes tragic. This is not difficult to understand if you look at the biographies of the naives. They seem to store in their genetic memory the integrity of perception and consciousness characteristic of their ancestors. Constancy, stability and peace of mind are the conditions for a normal life.

And here everything becomes clear, having looked more closely, that a naive mind is a mind of a special kind. He's not good or bad, he's just like that. It includes a holistic worldview, in which a person is unthinkable outside of nature and space, he is mentally free and can enjoy creative process, remaining indifferent to its result. He, this mind, allows us to imagine that a person can and does exist in two dreams.

At the same time, the potential that the naive has can be in demand in our turbulent 21st century, when we “record not the history of evolution, but the history of catastrophes.” He will not push or push anyone aside, and he can hardly become the ruler of thoughts; he will only be able to present his most valuable quality - a holistic, unclouded consciousness, “that type of worldview that can only be called truly moral, since it does not divide the world, but feels it through the body” (V. Patsyukov). This is the moral, ethical and cultural strength of naive art.

Currently, a huge number of naive art museums have been created in the world. In France they are in Laval and Nice. Such a museum was created in Russia. The Moscow Museum of Naive Art was founded in 1998 and is a state cultural institution.

Publications in the Museums section

Guide to Naive Art

Naïve art or the art of non-professional artists rarely comes to the attention of gallery owners and art critics. However, the works of naive artists, simple and open, can be no less dramatic and even artistically significant than the paintings of recognized masters. Read about what naive art is and why it is interesting to follow it in the material of the portal “Culture.RF”.

Naive means simple

Alexander Emelyanov. Self-portrait. 2000s. Private collection

Vladimir Melikhov. Bifurcation. 1989. Private collection

Naive art is the work of artists without professional education, who systematically and constantly engage in painting. In the naive itself, one can distinguish separate directions, for example, art brut or outsider art - the art of artists with a psychiatric diagnosis.

A very important question for art critics is how to distinguish a naive artist from an amateur. The criteria for assessing the work of such artists are usually the originality and quality of their work. The personality of the author himself also plays a big role: did he devote his life to art, did he strive to say something in his works (painting, graphic, sculptural).

The first one is naive

Naive art has always existed. Rock paintings, Paleolithic sculpture and even ancient kouroses and caryatids - all this was done in a primitivist manner. The emergence of naive art as an independent movement of fine art did not happen overnight: this process took more than a century and ended at the end XIX century. The pioneer of this innovative movement was Henri Rousseau, a self-taught French artist.

Rousseau served in the customs for a long time, already in adulthood he left his profession and took up painting seriously. He first tried to exhibit some of his work in 1886 at the Paris Exhibition of Independents, but was ridiculed. And later, at the beginning of the 20th century, he met famous avant-garde artists, including Robert Delaunay, who appreciated Rousseau’s bold style. Avant-garde artists often “pulled out” such original painters as Rousseau, helped them develop and even drew inspiration from their work and their vision for their own artistic search. Soon, Rousseau's works began to be in demand; the public appreciated the originality of his subjects and especially his work with color.

In Russia, naive art appeared before a mass audience at the 1913 “Target” exhibition organized by artist Mikhail Larionov. It was there that the works of Niko Pirosmani, brought from Georgia by brothers Kirill and Ilya Zdanevich, artists and art historians, were exhibited for the first time. Before this exhibition, the public had no idea that amateur art could be more than popular prints and folk paintings.

Naive traits

Niko Pirosmani. Portrait of Sozashvili. 1910s. Moscow Museum of Modern Art

Niko Pirosmani. Woman with Easter eggs. 1910s Moscow Museum of Modern Art

The works of naive masters are often united by an atmosphere of joy and an enthusiastic view of everyday life, bright colors and attention to detail, a combination of fiction and reality.

Many classics of domestic naive art, except, perhaps, Niko Pirosmani and Soslanbek Edziev, went through the school of ZNUI - Correspondence People's University of Arts. It was founded in 1960 on the basis of art courses named after Nadezhda Krupskaya; Robert Falk, Ilya Mashkov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and other venerable authors taught there. It was training at ZNUI that gave naivists the opportunity to gain technical skills, as well as a professional opinion about their work.

Each naive artist is formed as an artist in a certain isolation, remains forever closed within the framework of his own ideas and his own style, and can work throughout his life with a range of eternal themes. Thus, Pavel Leonov’s works of the 1980s and late 1990s are not much different: similar compositions, similar heroes, all the same perception of reality, close to that of a child. Except that the paints are becoming better quality and the canvases are becoming larger-scale. The same can be said about the vast majority of naivists. They react especially to significant social events: they do not change the style depending on the time, but only add new material signs of the era to their works. Like, for example, the classic naive Vladimir Melikhov. His work "Division" is a wonderful illustration female share in Soviet Union. It depicts a woman who is literally in two places at once: working in a factory with one hand, and nursing a child with the other.

Naive themes

Pavel Leonov. Self-portrait. 1960. Moscow Museum of Modern Art

Pavel Leonov. Harvest. 1991. Moscow Museum of Modern Art

Naivists turn to universal human themes that are close to everyone: birth and death, love and home. Their works are always understandable, since the artists try to express the ideas that excite them as simply as possible, without delving into symbolism and hidden meanings.

One of the first strong impressions of a naive artist is his exit into the city, into the social environment. Naivists, who, as a rule, live in the countryside, tend to idealize the city; they paint streets and squares as light, airy and quaint. Especially artists, such as Elfriede Milts, are inspired by technological innovations - in particular, the Moscow metro.

Another common theme for naive art can be considered the image of a person - portraits and especially self-portraits. Naivists have a way of exploring the world through the prism of their personality, their own appearance and the appearance of the people around them. They are also interested in the way a person’s inner world is reflected in his appearance. Therefore, works in the portrait genre give the viewer the opportunity to get to know the naivists almost personally, to get to know them as the artists perceive themselves. The isolation of naivists in their own inner world is illustrated, for example, by a self-portrait contemporary artist Alexandra Emelyanova. He portrays himself as a collection of images and themes to which he addresses himself.

Almost all classics of naive art interpret the theme of childhood in one way or another. Naivists always remain children, so works associated with this idea - touching and spontaneous - become a kind of point of contact between the child of the past and the child of the present, who still lives in the soul of the artist. It is noteworthy that naiveists almost never paint themselves in the image of a child. They concentrate on the world around them, on portraits of other children, on images of animals - on what can be seen in the alphabet.

Svetlana Nikolskaya. Stalin died. 1997. Moscow Museum of Modern Art

Alexander Lobanov. Self-portrait in an oval frame under the coat of arms of the USSR. 1980. Moscow Museum of Modern Art

The next important theme in naive art is the theme of the feast. Artists love to paint still lifes, feasts, weddings and festivities - they can especially often be seen in the paintings of Niko Pirosmani, Pavel Leonov and Vasily Grigoriev, for whom the feast takes on a sacred, Eucharistic meaning. A feast of love, a feast of fun, a feast of the family circle - every artist finds something very personal and valuable in this theme. As in the theme of home, family hearth, which symbolizes peace, comfort and safety. In the works of Pavel Leonov, Soviet reality is always associated with joy, holidays and parades. Leonov even portrays his work as joyful and bright.

However, naive art is not always idyllic. For example, outsider art or art brut often leaves the viewer with a vague, uneasy feeling. There is no harmonious and complete world in these works - artists most often concentrate on one motif or subject and reproduce it in each work. For the classic outsider art Alexander Lobanov, such an object was the Mosin rifle. Lobanov himself never fired a rifle, and his works contain no war, no cruelty, no pain. This item is like an artifact, an embodiment of power, just like the active Soviet symbolism that is present in the vast majority of his works.

Key philosophical themes for artists - birth and death. Naivists deify the birth of man, both physical and personal, and compare it with the divine origin of life in general. And they perceive the departure of a person from the point of view of the memory and pain remaining about him. For example, in a painting by Svetlana Nikolskaya, people dressed in gray contrast with a rich red background; it is impossible to read their thoughts or feelings - they seem to have been petrified.

The era of classical naive is gradually passing away. Today, such a closed and isolated existence of naivists as it was before is impossible. Artists must be actively involved in the art process and understand what is happening on the art market. This is neither good nor bad - just a sign of the times. And the more valuable will be each viewer’s appeal to naive art, until it completely disappears.

The portal "Culture.RF" thanks the senior researcher for his help in preparing the material MMOMA, member of the curatorial group of the exhibition “NAIV...BUT” Nina Lavrishcheva and employee Museum of Russian popular print and naive art Maria Artamonova.

naive art

In the 20th century All more attention began to attract one phenomenon that had previously not been considered art at all. This is the work of amateur artists, or so-called. weekend artists. Their work is called naivism or primitivism. The first naivet taken seriously was a French customs official Henri Rousseau(1844 – 1910), who devoted himself to painting after retiring. His paintings depicted those events Everyday life, then full of fantasy images of distant countries, deserts and tropical forests. Unlike many later naiveists, Rousseau was unfeignedly naive, he believed in his calling and painted his paintings with clumsy, helplessly drawn and funny human and animal figures, without doubt.

He didn't care about the future either. But the color combinations in his paintings are beautiful, and the simplicity and spontaneity give them great charm. This was noticed already at the beginning of the century by the Cubists, led by Picasso, who were the first to support naivism.

Another outstanding naiveist who never received recognition during his lifetime was the Georgian Niko Pirosmanashvili (1862 – 1918).

In the paintings of this self-taught artist we see animals, landscapes, life ordinary people: labor, festive feasts, fair scenes, etc. Strength Pirosmanashvili's creations - a magnificent range of colors and a pronounced Georgian national identity.

Museum of Naive Art in Paris

Most of the naivists are people who live in remote corners, in small towns or villages and are deprived of the opportunity to study painting, but are full of desire to create. Even in the technically helpless works of the naivists, the freshness of feelings that both strive for and high art Therefore, naivism also attracted professional artists.

The fate of naivism in America is noteworthy. There already in the 19th century. he was taken seriously and the works of the naivists were collected for museum collections. There were few art schools in America, large art centers Europe was far away, but people’s desire for beauty and the desire to capture their living environment in art did not weaken. The solution was the art of amateurs.

“The desire to paint was born in me oil paints. I had never painted them before: and then I decided to experiment with them and drew a portrait of myself on canvas,” Tula nobleman Andrei Bolotov wrote in his diary in the fall of 1763. More than two and a half centuries have passed, and the “hunt for painting” continues to overcome our contemporaries. People who have never picked up a pencil and brush are suddenly overcome by an irresistible passion for fine arts.

The emergence of a new direction

Naive art XX - beginning of the XXI century is noticeably different from the primitiveness of previous centuries. The reasons for this, oddly enough, lie in the development of “scientific” art. IN late XIX centuries, leading European masters were acutely aware of the “fatigue” of their contemporary culture. They sought to gain vitality from the savage, primitive world that existed in the past or still survives in remote corners of the planet. Paul Gauguin was one of the first to follow this path. Refusing the benefits of the decrepit European civilization, the artist tried to equate “primitive” life with “primitive” creativity; he wanted to feel like a person with the blood of a savage flowing in his veins. “Here, near my hut, in complete silence, I dream of lush harmonies among the intoxicating smells of nature,” Gauguin wrote about his stay in Tahiti.

Many masters of the beginning of the last century went through a fascination with the primitive: Henri Matisse collected African sculpture, Pablo Picasso acquired and hung in a prominent place in his studio a portrait of Henri Rousseau, Mikhail Larionov at the exhibition “Target” showed the public craft signs, works by Niko Pirosmanashvili and children’s drawings.

Since the 1910s, primitive artists have had the opportunity to display their works alongside the works of professional artists. As a result, a dramatic change occurred with the primitive: it realized its own artistic value and ceased to be a phenomenon of peripheral culture. The simplicity of the primitive is becoming more and more imaginary. Shortly before his death, Rousseau admitted: “I retained my naivety... Now I could no longer change my style of writing, acquired through hard work.”

At this moment, naive art emerges as a special artistic phenomenon, different from primitive art. Often the work of naive artists is defined as unprofessional art, highlighting the lack of academic artistic training. But this is clearly not enough to understand its difference from amateurism and handicraft. “Naive” shifts the emphasis from the result to internal causes. This is not only “unlearned”, but also “simple-minded”, “unsophisticated” - a direct, undifferentiated, unreflective sense of reality.

Distinctive features

The self-taught person, in search of self-expression, unconsciously turns to forms children's creativity- to contour, flattened space, decorativeness as the primary elements of the new world he creates. An adult cannot draw like a child, but he can directly perceive his surroundings like a child. Distinctive feature naive art lies not in the artist’s creations, but in his consciousness. The painting and the world depicted on it are felt by the author as a reality in which he himself exists. But his visions are no less real for the artist: “What I want to write is always with me. I immediately see all this on the canvas. Objects immediately ask to be put on canvas, ready-made in both color and shape. When I work, I finish all the objects until under the brush I feel that they are alive and moving: animals, figures, water, plants, fruits and all nature” (E. A. Volkova).

The prototypes of the depicted objects exist in the author’s imagination in the form of materialized but inanimate phantoms. And only in the process of completing the picture do they become animated. This life created on canvas is the birth of a new myth.

// pichugin2

A naive artist depicts not so much what he sees, but what he knows. The desire to convey his ideas about things, people, the world, to reflect the most important moments in the flow of life involuntarily leads the master to schematization and clarity - a state when the simpler things become, the more significant they are.

A lake with ducks, work in the fields and gardens, washing clothes, a political demonstration, a wedding feast. At first glance, the world is ordinary, ordinary, even a little boring. But let's take a closer look at these simple scenes. They tell a story not so much about everyday life as about being: about life and death, good and evil, love and hate, work and celebration. The depiction of a specific episode is perceived here not as a fixation of a moment, but as an edifying story for all times. The artist clumsily writes out the details, cannot separate the main from the secondary, but behind this ineptitude there arises a system of worldview that completely sweeps aside the accidental, the momentary. Inexperience turns into insight: wanting to tell about the private, the naive artist talks about the unchangeable, eternally existing, unshakable.

Naive art paradoxically combines the unexpectedness of artistic solutions and the attraction to a limited range of themes and subjects, quoting once found techniques. This art is based on repeating elements corresponding to universal human ideas, typical formulas, archetypes: space, beginning and end, homeland (lost paradise), abundance, holiday, hero, love, great beast.

Mythological basis

In mythological thinking, the essence and origin of a phenomenon are identical to each other. On his journey into the depths of myth, the naive artist comes to the archetype of the beginning. He feels close to the first person to rediscover the world. Things, animals and people appear on his canvases in a new, unrecognizable form. Like Adam, who gives names to everything that exists, the naive artist gives new meaning to the ordinary. The theme of heavenly bliss is close and understandable to him. The idyll is understood by the artist as the original state, given to a person from birth. Naive art seems to return us to the childhood of humanity, to blissful ignorance.

But the theme of the Fall is no less widespread. The popularity of the “expulsion from paradise” plot indicates the existence of a certain family connection between the myth of the first people and the fate of the naive artist, his worldview, and his spiritual history. The outcasts, the lumpen of heaven - Adam and Eve - acutely feel the loss of bliss and their discord with reality. They are close to the naive artist. After all, he knows the serenity of childhood, the euphoria of creation, and the bitterness of exile. Naive art acutely reveals the contradiction between the artist’s desire to understand and explain the world and the desire to bring harmony into it, to resurrect lost integrity.

The feeling of “paradise lost,” often very strong in naive art, exacerbates the artist’s sense of personal insecurity. As a result, the figure of a protective hero often appears on the canvases. In traditional myth, the image of the hero personifies the victory of the harmonious principle over chaos.

In the works of naive artists, the appearance of the winner, well known from popular prints - Ilya Muromets and Anika the Warrior, Suvorov and the conqueror of the Caucasus, General Ermolov - takes on the features of the civil war hero Chapaev and Marshal Zhukov. All of them are an interpretation of the image of the serpent fighter, stored in the depths of genetic memory, and go back to the iconography of St. George slaying the dragon.

The opposite of the warrior-defender is the cultural hero-demiurge. Moreover, in this case, the emphasis is transferred from external action to internal tension of will and spirit. The role of the demiurge can be played by a mythological character, for example Bacchus, who taught people winemaking, or a famous historical figure- Ivan the Terrible, Peter I or Lenin, personifying the idea of ​​an autocrat, the founder of a state or, referring to the mythological overtones, a progenitor.

But the image of the poet is especially popular in naive art. Most often, the same compositional technique is used: a seated figure is depicted with a piece of paper and a pen or a book of poetry in his hands. This universal scheme serves as a formula for poetic inspiration, and a frock coat, lionfish, hussar mantik or blouse act as “historical” details confirming the deep authenticity of what is happening. The poet is surrounded by the characters of his poems, the space of the world he created. This image is especially close to the naive artist, because he always sees himself in the picture universe next to his heroes, experiencing the inspiration of the creator again and again.

Soviet ideology had a great influence on the work of many naive artists. Built on mythological models, it formed images of the “beginning new era"and "leaders of peoples", replaced the living folk holiday Soviet rituals: official demonstrations, ceremonial meetings and ceremonies, awards for leading production workers, and the like.

But under the brush of a naive artist, the depicted scenes turn into something more than illustrations of the “Soviet way of life.” From many paintings a portrait of a “collective” person is built, in which the personal is blurred and pushed into the background. The scale of the figures and the stiffness of the poses emphasize the distance between the leaders and the crowd. As a result, the feeling of unfreedom and artificiality of what is happening clearly emerges through the external outline. Coming into contact with the sincerity of naive art, ideological phantoms, against the will of the authors, turn into characters in the theater of the absurd.

// pichugin

The essence of naivety

In naive art there is always a phase of copying a model. Copying can be a stage in the process of developing an artist’s individual style or a conscious independent technique. For example, this often happens when creating a portrait from a photograph. A naive artist has no shyness in front of a “high” standard. Looking at the work, he is captured by the experience, and this feeling transforms the copy.

Not at all embarrassed by the complexity of the task, Alexey Pichugin performs “The Last Day of Pompeii” and “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” in painted wooden relief. Quite accurately following the general outlines of the composition, Pichugin fantasizes in detail. IN " Last day Pompeii" the pointed Roman helmet on the head of a warrior carrying an old man turns into a round hat with a brim. In “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution,” the board for decrees near the execution place begins to resemble a school board - with white text on a black background (in Surikov it is the color of unpainted wood, but there is no text at all). But most importantly, the overall flavor of the work changes dramatically. This is no longer a gloomy autumn morning on Red Square or a southern night illuminated by the flashes of flowing lava. The colors become so bright and elegant that they conflict with the drama of the plots and change the internal meaning of the works. Folk tragedies translated by Alexey Pichugin are more reminiscent of fair festivities.

The “creative inferiority complex” of the master, which was one of the attractive aspects of the “old” primitive, is short-lived these days. Artists quickly discover that their less-than-skillful creations have their own charm. The unwitting culprits for this are art critics, collectors, and the media. In this sense, paradoxically, exhibitions of naive art play a destructive role. Few people manage, like Rousseau, to “preserve their naivety.” Sometimes yesterday's naive people - consciously or unconsciously - embark on the path of cultivating their own method, begin to stylize as themselves, but more often, drawn in by the inexorable elements of the art market, they fall into embraces as wide as gates popular culture.

Naive art (naive art) is one of the directions of primitivism, which is characterized by naive simplicity of technique, an anti-academic approach to painting, freshness of view and originality of the manner of execution of drawings. Unrecognized and initially persecuted for his “barbaric” attitude towards the canons of painting, the naive art eventually survived and took its rightful place in the history of world culture. The works of artists working in this genre often contain everyday scenes related to food, which, naturally, could not but interest our thematic site.

It should be said that the roots of the genre " naive art "go back far into the depths of centuries. The first examples of naive fine art can be considered rock paintings found in caves in South Africa. (We are sure that the drawings of the ancient hunter were more likely perceived by others as a menu, rather than painting :)).

Much later, the Greeks, having discovered Scythian statues of “stone women” north of the Black Sea, also considered them primitive “barbarism” due to the violation of body proportions, which in ancient Greek culture characterized harmony and beauty. Just remember " golden ratio» Polykleitos.
However, the "correctness" of classical art continued to be constantly subjected to partisan attacks. folk art. And so, after the overthrow of the rule of Rome in most European countries, fine art, having made a tack, changed course from perfection towards the search for expressiveness. The originality and originality of the former outcast and outsider, which was considered naive art, was very suitable as a means to achieve this goal.
At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that outstanding “art naive” artists would never have received world recognition if European artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Max Ernst and others had not become interested in their ideas and style. They supported this rebellion against the romance of classicism».
In search of the “fifth element” of fine art, they, like medieval alchemists, tried to irrationally operate with miracle and mystery, mixing in their paintings avant-gardeism and wild natural pristineness, which grew from the depths of the lost “primitive” world of Africa, as well as Central and South America.
It is well known that Pablo Picasso studied in detail the African style of “primitive art”, studied authentic masks and sculptures brought from there in order to comprehend the creative subconscious beginning of the “dark continent” and embody it in his works. Which largely determined his signature asymmetrical style. Even on, he uses disproportion techniques.
The portrait of this pioneering Spanish painter was uniquely executed by a Colombian artist who was himself dubbed " Picasso of South America«.

Former illustrator Fernando Botero Angulo (born 1932) became famous after winning first prize at the "Exhibition of Colombian Artists" in 1959. This opened the door for him to Europe, where the steep career of this original artist and sculptor began, whose work subsequently influenced many apologists of naive art. To see this, you can compare his paintings with the works of some of his contemporary colleagues in naive art. In order not to be distracted from the “food” topic, let’s take one of Botero’s favorite topics - picnics.

One of the oldest primitivist artists, the leader of Croatian naive art is Ivan Generalich (1914-1992). The lack of professional training, peasant origin and rural themes of his paintings did not prevent him from gaining recognition throughout Europe since 1953. Peasant life appears in his works as if seen from the inside, which gives them amazing expression, freshness and spontaneity.

The picture where a Croatian grandfather herds cows under the Eiffel Tower can be considered a secretive grin at the Parisian elite, just look at the author’s photo: a modest appetizer of sausage, bread and onions laid out on a stool; a wallet on the plank floor, dressed in a shabby sheepskin coat... The general is unpretentious and wise in life. French novelist Marcel Arlen wrote about him: “He was born of the earth. He has wisdom and charm. He doesn't need teachers."

Many artists of modern “naive art” seem to have not escaped the charm of the works of their predecessors. But, at the same time, they introduce elements of “social cult” unknown to Western Europeans into the spontaneity of artistic expression inherent in art-naive. As an example, here are several decorative genre scenes by the Belarusian artist Elena Narkevich , who emigrated to Spain many years ago. Her paintings are an ironic reconstruction of an idealized world, an ever-memorable common past, well known to all residents of the former CIS. They are filled with nostalgic vibes of the vanishing era of socialist realism with the smells of the kitchen, where Olivier is being prepared and housewives are bustling around waiting for guests, where dachas are replacing country houses, and picnics are called forays into nature.

And although Elena Narkevich’s works contain most of the formal signs of the “naive art” genre, such as distortions in geometric aspects, unrefined color on compositional plans, exaggerated proportions of figures and other markers of art naive, experts classify such works as pseudo-naive art or " artificially naive" - when the artist works in an imitative manner. (Another feature of naive art - the deliberate “childishness” of the image - was brought to commercial perfection by the artist Evgenia Gapchinskaya ).

In a manner similar to Elena Narkevich, the artist, originally from Donetsk, paints her paintings. Angela Jerich . We have already talked about her work in.

Inner world Angela Jerich's drawings are sometimes compared to the magic of depicting characters in Fellini's films. The artist succeeds in ironic and, at the same time, very loving “illustrations of a bygone era” of socialist realism. In addition to this, Angela has an elegant imagination and can capture the “beautiful moments” of life like Pushkin.

About her colleague in the “naive art workshop”, a Moscow artist Vladimir Lyubarov, we told you too. A series of his works entitled “ Eaters”, although he pleases the eye with edible still lifes, he does not highlight this “gastronomic reality” on its own. It is only an excuse to demonstrate the lives of your characters, their characters and feelings. . There you can also see his funny and heartfelt paintings. (Or on his personal website www.lubarov.ru).

If Lyubarov fled from civilization to the village to paint his pictures and engage in subsistence farming, then he is a “naive artist” Valentin Gubarev from Nizhny Novgorod moved to Minsk. (As if to make up for the loss of Elena Narkevich from emigration 🙂).

Paintings by Valentin Gubarev, which have incredible attractive power and charm. Even people far from art react to them emotionally and positively. His works contain a certain simplicity and irony, mischief and sadness, deep philosophy and humor. In his paintings there are many characters, details and objects, as on the balcony of a five-story panel building, littered with the belongings of several generations of residents. But, as connoisseurs of his paintings accurately note: “a lot of everything, but nothing superfluous.” For his passion for finely detailed paintings, he is called “ Belarusian Bruegel" Compare for yourself - on the left is Bruegel in the original, and on the right is one of hundreds of similar paintings by Gubarev. (By the way, using miniatures brilliantly, Bruegel depicted 118 proverbs from Scandinavian folklore in his painting).

In general, the emergence of primitivism was caused, on the one hand, by the rejection of modern urbanized life and the rise of mass culture, and on the other, by a challenge to sophisticated elite art. Primitivists sought to get closer to the purity, emotionality and unclouded clarity of folk or children's consciousness. These trends affected many artists in Europe, America and Russia.

It is impossible not to mention a bright representative of naive art and primitivism at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, French artist Henri Rousseau . His paintings are generally difficult to describe in words due to the riot of imagination and incomparable manner of drawing. He began to engage in painting in adulthood, without having the appropriate education. I often drew exotic jungles that I had never seen in my life. Ignoring numerous reproaches that “even a child can draw like that,” Rousseau followed the path of his calling. As a result, his persistence turned out to be the Archimedean lever that turned the world of fine art upside down: the genius of Henri Rousseau was recognized, and a new generation of artists took the baton from him.

Traits of primitivism were also inherent in the works of the great French painters, Paul Gauguin And Henri Matisse. Just look at Gauguin’s “Tahitian Women with Mangoes” or Matisse’s stormy “Joy of Life”: a foray into nature in in full swing. (It was not for nothing that Matisse was a Fauvist).

Russia had its own groups of adherents of the naive art style. Among them are members of the creative communities “Jack of Diamonds” (P. P. Konchalovsky, I. I. Mashkov), “Donkey’s Tail” (M. F. Larionov, N. S. Goncharova, M. Z. Chagall) and others.

One of the geniuses of primitivism is rightfully Niko Pirosmani . This self-taught artist from a small Georgian village made a meager living selling milk. He often gave his paintings as gifts to buyers or gave them to resellers in the hope of gaining some money. Merry feasts, scenes peasant life, nature - these are the themes that inspired Pirosmani. All picnics and holidays in his paintings have characteristic national characteristics. The loneliness and confusion of a genius artist in the hustle and bustle of urban philistinism turns into philosophical reflections on his canvases about the place of man (and living beings in general) in the world, and his feasts and feasts speak of moments of joy in earthly existence.

We can continue to give examples, but even from a small excursion the multicultural phenomenon of naive art becomes obvious. This can be confirmed by hundreds of museums and galleries where paintings by “naive artists” are stored. Or sales of naive art works amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The genre of primitivism turned out to be tenacious and adaptable, like all the simplest things in nature. Naive art developed not thanks to academic “artificial” sciences (art-naive artists often had no education), but rather in spite of it, because the environment for the birth and habitat of naive art is deeply natural phenomena, inaccessible to scientists and critics, where the almighty genius of Man reigns.

In the case of works of the genre naive art, we fully agree with the expression of Louis Aragon: “ It is naive to consider these paintings naive.»