Vera Gutkina - 'In colors', 2.9.05 – 30.9.05
Israeli Art, Yemin Moshe, Jerusalem
It was in 1982 when I first met Vera. She had just made Aliya from the former Soviet Union and was visiting my gallery, where she invited me to see her works. Vera showed me paintings she had brought with her from Moscow as well as several paintings she had worked on since her arrival to Israel. It was immediately evident that Vera was a very talented artist, and I invited her to exhibit her works in my gallery. It was not long before Vera Gutkina was discovered as a distinguished artist and was invited to exhibit her works in galleries in Israel and abroad (London, Paris, New York and Toronto). She received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education and Culture and studied in Cité des Arts in Paris, where she has returned to over the years to paint. Since she made Aliya, Vera lives and works in Jerusalem. Her works include various series, distinguished from each other in terms of their subject or in terms of the technical means which she employs. Vera's paintings are a product of her observing nature. When she paints landscape, a portrait or still nature, she intends to convey a message of life. In Vera's opinion, the painting is a window through which she wishes to express a sense of freedom, and this is only possible by means of freedom of expression, which she experiences each time she finds a new path. The possible means of expression are varied and the passage from one style to another is far from simple, but for Vera it is a necessity. The painting, for her, is like a living creature - the product of her own creation. Upon feeling she has exhausted her ability to give life Vera turns to a different means of expression. The paintings exhibited presently are the fruits of her work in the past two years, where one can notice a 'closing circle'. Vera does not refrain from conveying longing for her cultural sources. This is not longing in the simple sense of the word, but rather what is expressed is a sense of freedom and ability to go back – without any guilty feelings – to the time and space where the sources of knowledge and values she had absorbed, are found. Unlike the first years after she had made Aliya, -during which her will to disassociate herself from the former Soviet Union was apparent, presently, that which is at the core of her works is the icons and the traditional style of her native country, all the while intertwined with effects of local color and landscape – the result of Vera's life experience. Using expressive brush strokes, Vera transforms the objects and frees them from reality to abstractness. Each object is decomposed into shades of colors, and in this respect, Vera's paintings constitute a continuation and development of the impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, especially those of Cézanne and Van Gaugh. In Vera's paintings, the boundaries between the object, the image and the background diminish – all is transformed into a spectacular surface of color, and the painting on the fabric is as if alive, filled with rhythmic motion of linear blots and the bursting energy of color. Vera Gutkina's Gallery... |  |