Tabenkin Lev Ilyich

1952 Born in Moscow
. 1975 graduated from Moscow Polygraphic Institute (Faculty of Arts and the technical design of printed materials)
. since 1978 member of the Union of Artists
.
. Collections where works
.
. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
. State Art Museum, Novosibirsk
. Kemerovo Regional Museum of Fine Arts, Kemerovo
. Ivanovo Art Museum, Ivanovo
. Kursk Picture Gallery
. Deineka, Kursk
. Orlovsky Museum of Fine Arts, Eagle
. Museum of Fine Arts Novokuznetsk, Novokuznetsk
. State Museum of Art, Sumi
. Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany
. Galerie Nannen, Emden, Germany
. Ludwigsburg Museum, Ludwigsburg, Germany
. Private collection, Paris, France
.
. Participation in exhibitions and auctions
.
. SOLO EXHIBITIONS

. 1989 Julia Tocaier Gallery, Paris, France
. Simon Dresdnere Gallery, Toronto, Canada
. Kaj Forsblom Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
. 1992 Exhibition Hall on Solyanka, Moscow
. 1993 Buckham Gallery, Flint, USA
. Janice Charach Epstein Museum / Gallery, Detroit, USA
. 1994 Maya Polsky Gallery, Chicago, USA
. 1995 Willy D `Huysser Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
. 1996 Gallery "Manege", Moscow
. GROUP EXHIBITIONS

. 1974-88 Youth Exhibition
. Moscow
1987 "Images of Young Soviet Artists". Tokyo, Japan
"Painting and Modernism". Kashirka, Moscow
1987-88 "Glasnost". Kunsthalle Stiftung Henri Nannen, Emden, Germany
1988 "Contemporary Soviet Artists". Madrid, Spain
"Contemporary Soviet Artists". Studio Marconi, Milan, Italy
"SOTHEBY` S. Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art ". World Trade Center, Moscow
1989 "Festival of Baltic Sea Countries and Norway & Iseland". Rostock, Germany (gold medal)
1990 "Six peintres sovietiques d` ajourd `hui". Foundation Mona Bismarck, Paris, France
1990-91 "5 +1 Painters of Moscow". Museum of Contemporary Arts, Portugal
1991 "Exhibition of Russian Art". Sim Gallery, Hong Kong
1993 "Internationale Biennale Classic IV". Kortrijk, Belgium 1996 "ARSO-96". Madrid, Spain
Moscow - Jerusalem ". Central House of Artists, Moscow
1997 "ARSO-97". Madrid, Spain
1998 "Father and Son" (together with Ilya Tabenkin). Moscow International Art Salon "CHA - 98", Central House of Artists, Moscow
Autobiographical notes

It is human nature irrepressible desire for freedom. The whole history of civilization is filled with the desire of some to impose freedom "for themselves" other. Trouble to someone who is willing to live a "foreign" freedom, freedom in someone's Statement. What is a "perceived need" N Do we understand it as a "need" an animal, ripping out kletkiN Freedom - is "like two times two is four". Freedom for man is a person of Christ, this is the right choice and responsibility before God. At the core of her art.
My paintings, large or small, good or bad, were born out of this longing for freedom, because only in the works and I was really happy, forget about his ego, become a particle "something". These paintings are born from the life of my father, whom I love endlessly, from his suffering from his camps and prisons, from his desire for freedom. These paintings were not born from an excess, but from lack. Maybe in history have been happier times.
. I have worked with 15 years, but in the end, my experience today is the experience of overcoming vulgarity, dumb, imposed concepts.
. I wrote to people, markets, railway stations, pubs, trolley buses, streets and shops, trying to understand themselves in the world, to present the facts and, based on reality, to stand a little taller
. And you want to reach for something higher, to convert the element in the plastic, because it is in this whole meaning of freedom in life in accordance with the highest laws.
. The last few years, after some opening of the "milestones" in our country in the world appears a certain awareness of the existence of our fine art
. Sometimes it takes "ethnographic" forms. However, the principles of art are the same for all. After "Arttsentr was in the souls of Henry Moore, as well as in Hokusai. We live on a ball and all to the center of one distance. Who knows, maybe our difficulties, the total pressure given birth to the famous confrontation, some internal discipline, possibly the germ of something new.

Criticism

The summer of 1987 Leo Tabenkin shown at an exhibition in the Manege two new works. The smaller of them attracted the frightening power. "Tremendous strength and pret ... Why this moschN Right Masaccio "- said my companion. And I accidentally hooked eye title: "Refugees". What bezhentsyN OtkudaN KudaN
The summer of 1987 the refugees we have not yet been ... I have classified the plot to the works of the remembrance of war. All of our baby boomers are rich in such polufantaziyami-poluvospominaniyami. We dreamed of a military childhood dreams. Military nightmares. This distinct before waking and sleep seemed then track Tabenkin. Now the situation is a refugee - with and without baggage - in someone's house or even in homelessness has become accustomed. No, I do not think Leo Tabenkin prophet. He simply has the finest artist's intuition, which allows him to feel, to guess the anxiety and pain of the world. Social anxiety, too.
Even in the early 80's critics confidently tagging Tabenkin to painters plastic, that is, to those for whom the expressiveness of the image is achieved expressiveness tsvetopostroeny. In this painting throbbing colors, the movement and determine the germination and design, and the plot. It builds a picture of the color, heavy, ponderous and sometimes monotonous. Leo Tabenkin not colorist in the old sense of the word. The palette of his strict, almost poor, and he seemed to be looking for the color of wealth. Diversity, in any case. Color for him is not a jewel, not a holiday for the eyes, and sort of clay. His image of the artist shapes the world as a potter, and sets in motion the other clay, which we all mesim - clay daily. Or is this yet another clay and the apparent familiarity of her eye obmanchivaN
'Find a place of mass in space "- defines the artist one of its objectives. "Mass in space" - a working definition. And that is incomplete, and accurately. But it's always live weight, closed in its ponderous physicality, a tight cluster of biological energy, whether man or bird.
. In my opinion, Leo Tabenkin - one of the few artists who can stop time, stop, keeping the main thing - the movement of his paintings from chaos to order
. In this movement is drawn, though not without resistance, attentive contemplative. And then the new reality before our eyes is built inside the canvas, squeezing the first, this. And then give up painting again, of course, a place of life, but will make it richer, fuller and thicker.
. Leo Tabenkin belongs to those recently still young, and now quite mature masters who, having received recognition, all the time turns out to be on the side of the critics and the public interest
. PochemuN about seven years his tongue painting was too unusual, fresh, plastic unexpected ... And so inconvenient. And they had all somehow unsettled ... And the monstrous bird ... Seagull is ... A strange sort. It seemed strange then, and himself the voice of the artist, but now the language of his paintings have already seen by many as too quiet, traditional, almost "museum". Art has changed the situation.
. "Pure Painting" Tabenkin screened, to break free, much more eye-catching, relevant, and most importantly, have recently banned or poluzapretny Sots Art, whose intonation, and daggers, and ironic all at once, have been particularly clearly to us today
. And the pathos of exclusion, romanticism more recent underground existence makes the art of artists of this trend is particularly attractive.
. But the heroic period of the underground is over, and again becomes a particularly important criterion of artistic quality half-forgotten
. Meanwhile, it is necessary to continue painting there is a painting, not only as a chronicle of the time, both journalism, pungent and sharp as a bitter smile at himself and us - the audience. Someone has to stay around the campfire, somebody has to keep the fire, ensuring that the temperature, maintaining the level of quality that are only allowed to exist and the natural life of the Arts.

E. Lvov. 'Clay and poultry Leo Tabenkin (fragments). " - Ogonek, 1990, N37