Fyodor Konyukhov
The world famous traveler Fyodor Konyukhov will appear for the first time in the exhibition as an artist endowed with a bright and extraordinary gift. Pictures and graphic works made in various techniques were the result of numerous journeys, where the polar ice, the waters of the world’s oceans and mountain peaks provide the impetus for the emergence of monumental compositions and free pictorial interpretations. The exhibition at the Mikhailovsky Castle will feature more than fifty paintings and graphic works created over the past three decades.
The exposition covers the main stages of the Konyukhov path: from the early, largely autobiographical picture “The Red Man” (1979) to the works of 2000–2010s. Here one can find story paintings and portraits, animalistic motifs and free landscape improvisations, marked by the conditionality of the painterly rendition and sometimes reaching pure abstraction. In recent years, Fyodor Konyukhov turns to the iconography of Christian plots and images, allegorically revealing referring to his trips as an eternal journey and ascetic path, having both an earthly and sacred dimension.
