Kirill Guschin

Kirill Guschin is a man of the Petersburg culture, the artist, whose talent attracts by rare harmony and constancy of views and passions. The echo of the 1960s-70s esthetics is tangible in the artist?s works of different years, including those, created recently. In the 1960s Guschin found his style and his unique image in painting. Nerl (1962), Red Church (1966), Suzdal. Pond (1962), Gorokhovets. Spring Tide (1969-70), On Green Hills (1962), Filimonovo Toys (1977), Window in Podol (1994), Reminiscence of Snow and Suzdal (2002), Polkh-Maidan (2006)… Almost all works at the exhibition are still-lives, landscapes, portraits and genre composi-tions and examples of fusion of various genres. Their boundaries are blurry, and truth and fiction are inseparable in Guschin?s paintings. The majority of works were created in a studio: the motif and the subject acquired artistic form after long meditation. The total image was born in con-sciousness, but nature sketches and numerous watercolours, in which the artist "memorised" the passing condition, impulsed fantasy. A group of works, conceived and created in Dvorischi, Pskov Province, is a single series. Beginning with the late 1970s, Dvorischi became both a salutary island and "the promised land" for Guschin. The long-lasting absence of the artist?s works at exhibitions (prohibited by the Exhibition Committee) did not interfere with his creative activities, and the beauty of Pskov nature calmed him and recon-ciled him to everyday squabbling. Among the best canvases of the Pskov suite are June in Dvorischi (1979), Light Day in Dvorischi (1980), Morning. Dry Tree (1983-85), April in Dvorischi (1985), Flowers and a Swallow (1984), Autumn Birds (1995), Haymaking Time (2002). Dream and poetic experience, similar to those in Alexander Blok?s poetry, underlay the urban motifs — Morning on a Canal (1977), House of Alexander Blok (1978), Still-Life with Dream Books (1977), Spring on the Novo-Admiralteisky Ca-nal (1988), Melody on a Canal (1993), Death of a Black Dog (1994). Melodious-ness of the colour spectrum, expressive rhythmics of contours, and details of the image with fundamental sense merge into a "magical crystal" in Guschin?s paint-ings (according to L. Mochalov, art critic). Time, events, thoughts and feelings — all revive in the artist?s works, thus, revealing a wonderful world, in which kind-ness and spiritual nobility reign against all the odds.