Vasily Shulzhenko (born in 1949) is a Russian artist who creates in the style of grotesque realism, who in his paintings prefers to depict degraded alcoholics from the Russian countryside and everything that is associated with their lives and the immoderate use of alcoholic beverages. His characters often do not cause any feelings except the most negative, the artist as if deliberately displays all the baseness of human nature, and at the same time disfigures and distorts the faces of the heroes of his paintings. They are usually always swollen, hungover, with traces of days of drinking.
Directing
And he also boldly distorts the proportions of people, even Lenin in his painting looks puffy and powerful, as if he had been doing bodybuilding or hard physical labor for many years.
Lenin and the peasants
His paintings rarely leave anyone indifferent and cause a variety of emotions - from delight, for the desire to show the truth of life, to sharp rejection: “how can you put such a slander on Russian people, does Shulzhenko really think that all people in the province are just like that?”. Surely he doesn't think so, although he was born in Moscow and lived there all his life, he understands by virtue of his age that people in Moscow, in the provinces, even in the most remote villages are different, there are good and bad people.
Shepherds' brawl
And external gloss is not the main thing - you can be a drunken alcoholic and a wonderful person, and you can be a hustler and a bribe-taker, even though you work in a prestigious position in Moscow and drive a Mercedes. Alcoholics live everywhere, not only in the provinces, but in big cities there are more opportunities for self-realization, or even just artwork, such as a janitor or a security guard, for which some money is paid. That's why they go there from Russian villages, work for two weeks or a month on wear and tear, and at home they drink their earnings, reminding at the end of a two-week drunkenness the characters of Vasily Shulzhenko's paintings. And so it goes on all their lives, endlessly repeating this artwork-drinking cycle.
On a country road.
Shulzhenko is more annoyed by all the lowliness and filth he sees in ordinary life, for sure he is sincerely worried about these people who, due to various circumstances, lead such a way of life and sympathizes with them. Although sometimes a hard caricature breaks through the sympathy - it is better to observe one's own shortcomings from the outside, it is in the power of any sane person with some willpower to change something, to try to get out of this vicious circle.
Friends-buddies
Shulzhenko depict ordinary characters, create paintings in the style of socialist realism, they would hardly anyone would pay attention, especially in our time. But such a hard satire touches a nerve, allows you to take a different look at the usual things that many people simply prefer not to notice.
Shulzhenko's paintings are exhibited abroad, though there are many dissatisfied people there, but their claims are different. “Why do almost all the characters drink or smoke, it is unethical to depict people with cigarettes in their teeth”.
Races
Shulzhenko also complained that few people abroad understand the true message of his paintings, and the characters depicted in them are treated with contemptuous pity. According to the artist, he tries to show in them the inner beauty and strength, which is not visible behind the external unsightly circumstances. This is not a slander against Russian people, but a desire to make them better, to show their shortcomings, albeit in such a grotesque form.
Breakfast on the grass.
Although this kind of work is too one-sided, the author has lived in the provinces for many years and knows for sure that people there are different, and most of them do not resemble the characters in Shulzhenko's paintings, and such images are the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps that's why Shulzhenko's paintings raise so many questions among viewers, because this is the view of a metropolis dweller - by the way, the artist himself said that he took these images from his childhood memories, when he went with his parents to a dacha near Moscow.
And how do you feel about Shulzhenko's artwork - write in the comments.
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