MAXIM KANTOR

The exhibition presents the creative oeuvre of the modern artist and writer who had already received the recognition in the 1980’s in the Western World but till nowadays is less known to the Russian viewer. The exposition includes painting and graphic works of different years that reveal the characteristic features of Maxim Kantor’s searches that are connected with the actual problems of the modern global world.

The major theme of the artist’s creative oeuvre is the analytical treatment of condition of the Russian and Western society within the framework of the historical, genre and portrait images. The heroes of the presented works are the well-known politics, religious figures and writers together with common men who are permanently included in the contradictory process that does not have distinct aim and defined temporal and ethical coordinates. The evidently expressed social trend of Maxim Kantor’s art, that traces back to the tradition of the Critical realism of the 19th century, finds its embodiment in the expressive plastic language based on the dislodgements of the forms and intense contrast combinations of colors. In his paintings (State, Lonely Crowd) and in the Metropolis and Vulkanus graphic cycles Maxim Kantor aspires for visualization of structure of the modern social world order and of the power that in evident or concealed form determines the human fates.