About Friends, art, contemporary...

 

I worked with Dmitry Shuvalov for 17 years in the Drawing Department of the Vera Mukhina Leningrad Higher School of Art and Industry, from 1973 to 1990. In the beginning we were not so close, either spiritually or profes- sionally. I was a young teacher, and Shuvalov was also just beginning his work in the department. Although, unless I am mistaken, he already had some pedagogical experience.

His immense figure — which reminded one somehow of Max Voloshin — drew attention to itself right away. Outside of class he would stop anyone (a student, a fellow instructor) and start sketching on a scrap of paper, showing that one should always depict architectural subjects from a low point of view, or leave more space in a landscape for the sky. Later I saw his work in oils and watercolour and understood a great deal. Once I did a rather bad thing. I needed to create an educational curriculum on colouristics, which I understood only poorly at that time. I came to Shuvalov’s studio (it was open at any hour to anyone) and started trying to draw Dmitry out into a conversation on the topic. I think he understood perfectly what was going on, but he laid out all his ideas in detail, while I tried to remember and write down everything he said. Shuvalov was what one might call a painter from God. Against the background of many current works (which are not painting but rather decorated graphics, collages, or some such thing), his are truly painterly, since they are founded on the interrelations of warm and cool colours. Even now I try to explain it to art history students, but without practical experience it is difficult to understand why when the light is cool, the shadows must be warm and vice versa. And yet this is the whole secret of the art of painting!