Vasy Lozhkin's art is probably familiar to many people - the characters in his paintings are too colorful: extremely brutal men, emphatically severe Russian women, who probably live somewhere near Chelyabinsk, tirelessly vigilant Chekists, Russian bear - an obvious adherent of traditional values, sincerely believing that everything is very bad abroad, and good at home, the main culprits of our bad roads and, in general, of all Russian misfortunes - the Freemasons, and finally, the famous red cats as a collective image of a simple Russian man, repeatedly beaten by life, but nevertheless ready to step on the rake once again.
Defenders
The genre in which he draws is also interesting - it is a nuclear mixture of lubok, traditional caricature, mockery of Soviet and Russian propaganda posters, black humor and deliberate kitsch. So bad, so good - this is about Vasi Lozhkin's drawings, which have been repeatedly published not only on the Internet, but also in quite respectable publications, for example, in Ogonyok, when it still existed in paper form and journalists were allowed to write not only what they were supposed to.
To Mars
Lozhkin is ready to ridicule all the phenomena of our life - the stupidity and naivety of some of our citizens, sluggishness and distrust of everything new, the attempt to find fault, even if completely absurd and all sorts of stamps and labels, which most often turn out to be simply invented.
A lady in an evening toilet
Vasya Lozhkin is the creative pseudonym of Alexei Kudelin. He was born in 1976, and his youth fell on the dashing 90s, which in the artist's mind is remembered as a time of endless struggle for survival. He lost friends and acquaintances who died in gang fights, from endless drinking or drugs, and did not know what to do in life - he never worked in his specialty as a lawyer, which was considered very prestigious at the time, perhaps he just could not get a job there without blat. One day he found a sheet of absorbent cotton on a garbage dump and tried to write a frank blackness there, but fortunately he came to his senses in time, reasonably deciding that the terrible things should be laughed at, if possible, and not depicted in an extremely naturalistic way.
There is not enough sausage for everyone
The first fame received in the early noughties, when LiveJournal gained popularity, and it was on this site he registered as Vasya Lozhkin. His pictures about red cats were noticed and highly appreciated. Soon he found his first customers. Spooner realized - this is the “gold mine”. He somehow purely intuitively managed to develop his own unique creative style - a task that real artists struggle with for decades.
Glamorous kitty
By the way, Lozhkin does not consider himself an artist, he did not study at art school, and can not draw a real picture in the style of realism. But his caricatures are very popular, he somehow managed to embody in his artworks all the fears and archetypes of our society, convincingly ridicule them, and the true meaning of his works is not always obvious and leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Imagination
The artist's popularity contributed to a significant improvement in his material situation, and his pictures are printed on anything: bags, mugs, T-shirts, towels, baseball caps and plaids. It turned out that his images are so memorable and self-sufficient that they have become an integral part of mass culture.
An iron can
Each of them represents a certain stratum of our society. Bears are traditionalists, ready to convince everyone around them that we are the best and know exactly how to live correctly. The associations with officials and journalists of central channels are quite suggestive here. Well, and the famous red cats are ordinary citizens, who with their gullibility, naivety and endless optimism brighten up all the blackness that is going on around them. And these cats Lozhkin sincerely sympathizes with, they are positive characters in the paintings, even if sometimes they do terrible things.
Spring is red
Perhaps Lozhkin's humor is black, his characters are exaggerated, but one cannot help but admire his ability to come up with memorable images, although Lozhkin himself once said that they are all extremely concrete, without metaphors, and a crazy old woman with an axe is just an old woman with an axe. Of course he is lying, it is too easy to make various associations, and Lozhkin's work is interesting because everyone sees something different in it.
Buy handmade goods or modern art you can on artAlebrio - is an international marketplace for people who want to create, sell, buy and collect unique items and art - buy the best with us artAlebrio.com.
By confirming your order you unconditionally accept these General Conditions of Sale
