Andrei Gennadievich Pozdeev (1926-1998)

Andrei Gennadievich Pozdeev (1926-1998)
Countri: Russian

Andrei Gennadievich Pozdeev (1926-1998) is a Russian native talent in painting and graphic arts who lived and worked in the second part of XX century. His paintings can be seen in the most famous art galleries of the world:  in Tretyakov Art Gallery,Moscow Museum of Modern Art,Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg and in many other museums of Russia.

He was born in a Siberian village. As he wasn’t a professional painter, he studied painting and graphic arts on his own.  He was a very unpractical person. From a very young age he painted only those things which were interesting for him. He painted for pleasure not for income. He said: “I want to be poor because I want to be free!”  Living in poverty he experienced the happiness of creative works. He lived in that condition till the end of his life. 

Pozdeev began his creative way in 1950-s, he painted Siberian nature, the country life, people in a realistic style. In 1970-s he dedicated his works to Krasnoyarsk – a city in the centre of Siberia. He loved Krasnoyarsk very much, all his life he had been living and working in that city. He also painted landscapes of Krasnoyarsk suburbs, he loved to paint the Yenisei – a powerful Siberian river. In this period his realism was naïveand romantic. In 1980-s Pozdeev said about his realism: “It’s not interesting for me anymore, I’d like to try something new”. 

New styles he tried were opart, symbolism andabstractionism. At that period of his life he began to work on the “Bible series”. It is a monumental masterpiece including 14 enormous (3x4 metres) paintings which were created in an abstract style. In 1990-s Pozdeev painted models in the interior of his studio (abstraction, symbolism, opart). Simultaneously with the painting since1980-s to 1990-s Pozdeev created 25 huge  linoleum engravings, a lot of etchings and monotypies.  

A linoleum engravingsis represented by a portrait genre, literary characters (“Little Prince”, “Lancelot”), genre compositions (“Players”, “Flying”). These creations are a part of Pozdeev’s creative cycle, which is called “A Man’s Life”. This was a grandiose creative work. In these engravings we can see the searching of the form which was reduced to the minimalism. It caused a very strong reaction among artists, arts critics and philosophers.