The Multimedia Art Museum Is Hosting a Major Exhibition of Igor Shelkovsky, "Celestial City

The Multimedia Art Museum is hosting a major exhibition of Igor Shelkovsky, "Celestial City. The Artist's Studio". Together with the retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery and MAMM, it is the largest exhibition of the master's work.

Shelkovsky is one of the outstanding nonconformists, a landmark artist of the second half of the twentieth century, a creator in the modernist tradition, a fine sculptor who built a brilliant bridge from Russian contemporary art to Western art, a graphic artist and painter who has undoubtedly developed a highly recognisable and expressive style. Without Shelkovsky it is truly difficult to imagine the unofficial art of the second half of the last century: he is a man who stands for a whole era.

He was born in 1937 in Orenburg. He studied at the 1905 Memorial College of Art in Moscow. The beginning of his creative path is connected with the Sculptors' House of Creativity. Of great importance was his acquaintance with Fyodor Semyonov-Amursky, who opened modernist ideas to Shelkovsky and became his mentor. By the 1970s Igor Shelkovsky was one of the active artists of the unofficial art circle, and the famous one-day exhibitions were held in his studio. In the middle of that decade he emigrated to France, where he continued to remain at the centre of the Russian art scene, working prolifically and publishing the contemporary art journal "A-Ya".

Of his works Igor Sergeyevich says that he does not think about the style in which he works, he simply tries to make something beautiful. Shelkovsky often returns to a single theme and form, tries to improve his works, strives for monumentality and would like to enlarge his own sculptures to the size of a five-storey building, which in principle would do no harm either to the sculptures or to the landscape.

I love this artist, I am glad of the chance to visit his studio and see so many works, and I recommend it to everyone! It runs at MAMM until 15 December, do not miss it: who knows when such a chance will come again.