olechko

The past two days were an amazing feast for my senses - in Berlin.  The best thing that happened to me there was meeting Edward B. Gordon at his studio.

There I discovered the art of great local artist Adolph Menzel; his illustrations of  Friedrich the Great’s life are magnificent, but his art goes beyond so much more: amazing realist sketchy three-dimensional paintings on the life of the elite and poor. One can see his expressive strokes brushing over certain detail, and yet it’s so live with shapes and tone that looks better then photo.

At Bereznytsky gallery - a Ukrainian gallery on the Auguststrasse showing only the native art - Sergey Zarva shows exaggerated painted over Ogonyok magazine covers from the 70’s. Katja Solov’eva’s happy realism looks underdone - she could use another coat of paint. As the promo puts it: ” Their use of Soviet imagery raises a complex of fascinating questions surrounding the place of aesthetics and nostalgia in post-communist world, the politics of the Utopian imagination, and the intersection of past and present visual cultures.”

Art Center Berlin seemed lame, I did not enjoy much except for the Korean art on 4th.

The Gemäldegalerie offers the wealth of old masters’ paintings -  a true feast for the eyes: Carravaggios, Vermeers, besides Cranach and Brugel, ter Bosh, Holbein and de la Tur. A new interesting artist  that cought my eye there was Lucas van Valkenborch -with his painting Der winter.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under art, illustration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.