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Street Singer

Helii Korzhev

Basic information

ID: Ж-4046
Author: Helii Korzhev
Name: Street Singer
Date of creation: 1962
Country: the USSR
Culture: Contemporary times
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 200 x 150 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: genre art
Provenance: Received from the Directorate of Art Exhibitions of Ukraine, 1966

Information about author

Author: Helii Korzhev
Artist's lifetime: 1925–2012
Country: the USSR, russia
Biography: Helii Korzhev (7 July 1925, Moscow – 27 August 2012, Moscow) was a Soviet painter and teacher, academic of the USSR Academy of Arts, People's Artist of the USSR, and a representative of the "Severe Style". He was born into the family of the architect Mykhailo Korzhev. He studied at the Middle Moscow Art School, founded on the initiative of I. Grabar. He continued his studies at the Moscow Surikov Art Institute (1944–1950) in the studio of S. Herasimov. He taught at the Moscow Higher School of Art and Industry, named after S. Strohanov.
Close-ups, expressive composition, restrained colours, and reflection of dramatic moments of life characterise the artist's works. In the 1990s, H. Korzhev turned to the figurative and plastic experience of surrealism in a series of highly social works and biblical themes.

Object description

The painting "Street Singer" or "Blind Singer" (1962) belongs to a series of images of "superfluous people", people of social fringes, created based on the impressions of the artist's trips abroad. The means of making a dramatic artistic image are close-ups, expressiveness, laconicism of plastic expression and restrained grey-white-carmine colouring, characteristic of the "Severe Style". The mental and social hopelessness is visualised by the "compressed" inner space of the picture, limited by the wall and the outer border of the picture plane. The shiny glasses of the dark eyeglasses emphasise the separation of the street singer from society and the world.

Inscriptions

In the lower right corner: "Korzhev / 1962".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Street Singer

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