Dmitry Sergeyevich Kondratiev (1928–2008) was an artist and illustrator who worked in a variety of techniques and genres: graphics and easel paintings, landscapes, portraits, still lifes… He especially gravitated towards genre paintings.
Kondratiev entered the world of art as an established forty-year-old man, who had a difficult childhood as a “son of an enemy of the people”. He started working early and participated in the war with Japan (he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class, and the medal “For Bravery”).
Dmitry Sergeyevich was born in the Kemerovo region, settled in Samara in 1961 and taught at a children’s art school — probably this period influenced his further creative searches. In 1969, he moved to Veliky Novgorod and it was there that he established himself as an artist, and joined the Artists’s Union of the RSFSR.
He devoted forty years of his life to painting and created his own mythology, his own world, where folklore and Christian ideas, external simplicity and profound Russian sadness and wisdom are closely intertwined. Small in format (usually no wider than a meter) paintings invariably invite the viewer to reflect, empathize, and look for clues.
The desire to express something complex and even tragic in simple forms first drew the artist to the “Severe style” of the 1950s–1960s. He developed a unique symbolic language in depicting the Russian village, which he deeply loved and supported. The church, peasants, roosters and horses, bread, and rough ground are frequent heroes of Kondratiev’s paintings.
Over time, the artist abandoned his “Severe style” in favor of the so-called “primitivism of life” style that he himself created.
This style is close to primitivism (from Latin primitivus — “the first, the earliest”), or naive art, the essence of which is the conscious simplification of artistic means. It is a unique trend in that “primitive” works are perfect in themselves, they cannot and should not be improved. However, the similarity with this direction in Kondratiev’s art is only partial: due to the philosophical mood and metaphoricity of his paintings, it is more correct to call them parables.
Such is his canvas “Horses”. The kind, strong and beautiful creatures convey the idea of good and evil, friendship, hope and freedom.
The first solo exhibition of Dmitry Sergeyevich Kondratiev took place only in 1991, followed by seven more during the artist’s lifetime. Today his works are known in Russia, Italy, Finland, the USA, Sweden, and Germany. They are exhibited in museums of Veliky Novgorod and St. Petersburg.
Kondratiev entered the world of art as an established forty-year-old man, who had a difficult childhood as a “son of an enemy of the people”. He started working early and participated in the war with Japan (he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class, and the medal “For Bravery”).
Dmitry Sergeyevich was born in the Kemerovo region, settled in Samara in 1961 and taught at a children’s art school — probably this period influenced his further creative searches. In 1969, he moved to Veliky Novgorod and it was there that he established himself as an artist, and joined the Artists’s Union of the RSFSR.
He devoted forty years of his life to painting and created his own mythology, his own world, where folklore and Christian ideas, external simplicity and profound Russian sadness and wisdom are closely intertwined. Small in format (usually no wider than a meter) paintings invariably invite the viewer to reflect, empathize, and look for clues.
The desire to express something complex and even tragic in simple forms first drew the artist to the “Severe style” of the 1950s–1960s. He developed a unique symbolic language in depicting the Russian village, which he deeply loved and supported. The church, peasants, roosters and horses, bread, and rough ground are frequent heroes of Kondratiev’s paintings.
Over time, the artist abandoned his “Severe style” in favor of the so-called “primitivism of life” style that he himself created.
This style is close to primitivism (from Latin primitivus — “the first, the earliest”), or naive art, the essence of which is the conscious simplification of artistic means. It is a unique trend in that “primitive” works are perfect in themselves, they cannot and should not be improved. However, the similarity with this direction in Kondratiev’s art is only partial: due to the philosophical mood and metaphoricity of his paintings, it is more correct to call them parables.
Such is his canvas “Horses”. The kind, strong and beautiful creatures convey the idea of good and evil, friendship, hope and freedom.
The first solo exhibition of Dmitry Sergeyevich Kondratiev took place only in 1991, followed by seven more during the artist’s lifetime. Today his works are known in Russia, Italy, Finland, the USA, Sweden, and Germany. They are exhibited in museums of Veliky Novgorod and St. Petersburg.
