Gallery of Madonna, paintings, sales of pictures, art exhibitions, portraits of the artist Kuzmich

Introduction article of Sabina P.I.

        "He who loves the woman, who renders her image on the canvas, who loves the world, is inspired by God",- these words like a red line run all through the creative work of Alyaxei Vasilievich Kuzmich.
        The artist was bom in 1945, in a large, beautiful Polesian village of Mokhro, the Brest Region. He was too small to remember his father who on returning home from the war soon died. The boy was raised and taken care of by his mother Alexandra Maximovna.
        Alyaxei began to flex his muscles in painting from green years being boosted by his elder brother Stepan, a self-taught artist, by Anatoli Pavlovich Rubanovich, a drawing teacher at a local school, by his five sisters.
        On finishing 9 classes at a secondary school the would-be artist leaved for a distant Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk. He longed not only for big money and adventures but for knowledge. Krasnoyarsk is a birth-town of the great Russian artist Vasili Surikov. Much is connected with the name of that artist. There are an art college named after V. Surikov, a wonderful art gallery. Kuzmich would often come there and pass hours admiring the works done by the master of great unsurpassable talent. Apart from the art college there also was an art school named after V. Surikov. Kuzmich was lucky to enter this institution. As soon as he finished the art school, he got call-up papers. The spell of service over, Alyaxei came to Minsk to enter the Theatre and Arts Institute. Unfortunately, he got late for the entrance examinations and had to accept job at the ball-bearing plant. There he happened to know that the Palace of culture at the plant had a nice art studio headed by A. V. Baranovski. The lad hurried to show his works to the master. Anatoli Vasilievich praised them highly and admitted Alyaxei to the studio. While at the studio, Kuzmich got a still stronger belief in his talent, and endowment.
        Next year Alyaxei Kuzmich entered the Theatre and Arts Institute. All the exams he passed excellently. He studied there with ardour, and after graduating from the Institute, was left there to lecture. In no time Alyaxei understood that lecturing was not his predestination and left the Institute. All his aspirations he drived to self-expression and creativity.
        For 15 years Alyaxei Kuzmich was not acknowledged and wasn't permitted to have shows for the only, reason: On his pictures the artist boldly represented the mistery of the spell of a woman's body dovetailed with high morals and inspiration. Only in 1989 he had his first one-man show. It was a tremendous success. After that the works done by Alyaxei Kuzmich enjoyed great popularity in Vitebsk, Babruisk, Baranavichi, Grodna, Mahilyow, Gomel, Brest and other towns of the Republic. The bestshow-roomin Moscow was given to Kuzmich by the USSR Union of Artists. Then he felt especially accutely how necessary were his paintings for people.
        A serious, attentive analysis makes it possible to divide the whole of the creative work of Alyaxei Kuzmich into two stages. At the first stage the artist opposes the Madonna to a woman the labourer and shock-worker condemned by the revolution and so-called social mode of life to the living conditions of a slave. The woman on the pictures by Kuzmich is depicted boldly, in a romantic and lofty way. Actually, he renovates in art-painting not only the woman the way she is by nature but the lost morality of the people.
        At the second stage of Kuzmich artmanship the Madonna is depicted in a more real, earthly, histori-cally concrete manner. The artist feels the necessity to show the tragedy of events at definite historical breakdowns.
        The picture "The Red Madonna" not only produces a great impact on the viewer, it shakes. The head of the kind, sincere woman is clad in a red kerchief. It tightly outlines the shoulders of the heroine and fells down to her waist, producing a distorted picture of a deformed ideological circle the halo. And it is beyond the Madonna's ability to break through this evil circle which suffocates, oppresses and himiliates her. On loosing the belief to become free and independent, the Madonna weeps in despare. The planetary sorrow is expressed on her beautiful face.
        In the picture "Raghneda", the Polatsk princess is also weeping. And her weeping is historically justified. Raghneda is as if elevated over time and space. Her wide-open eyes bear sorrow and horror, a rebuke and a plea. Her hair done in locks, resembling a fan, strive into the sky. As if from the heavens the woman descended to see what had changed on the earth while she was absent, what people now look like. She brought from the depth of centuries her offence and anguish, her protest.
        The weeping Madonnas appeared for the first time on the canvases done by Kuzmich. It is difficult to revive, whether in the world history of art exists a weeping Madonna. The Belarusian artist breaks all the settled canons, he goes from the opposite. The Madonna's weeping is the weep of his own soul, which violently seeks the way out, the wounded soul driven to the extreme extent of protest in numerous collisions with the contradictions of developmnent of our society. One should be grateful to the artist for his great civic courage, patriotism, his staunch desire to see his people free and happy.
        Quite unexpectedly Alyaxei Kuzinich showed himself as a portraitist. The portraits of Stefaniya Stanyura, Zdislav Stomma, Galina Makarova, a well as the portraits of film directors Victor Turov, Mikhail Ptashuk and some others, are done in no hurry, with a deep show of the characters, are painted artistically precise and with expression. We don't notice ourselves that we open the most essential in their souls. We are glad for the artist that he helps us, prompts the way to understand better these prominent and esteemed people.
        In pure tones, by contrast colors paints Alyaxei Kuzmich his pictures. The white, the red, the blue, the green are his favourite colors. As he believes, these colors are the hymn to rebirth. He puts the paints on the canvas not by separate dabs but with compactness, solidly. His pictures contain much lighl, warmth, softness, tenderness. Nothing evokes the feeling of something artificial, nothing irritates. First of all, Kuzinich is realistic and therefore is precise. His colors and strokes of the paint-brush are filled with passion, strength, expressiveness.
        The color palette of the artist emits sunny energy. It is as if squashed in the frames of the pictures. It actively rushes into the space and freedom and it impresses the viewer with such a might, that one feels it with the soul, it warms the heart to never get tired in the lofty combat for rebirth of our spiritual life, culture, our national sacred possessions.

Artist's biography

       Alexei Kuzmich spent his childhood in a village of Marhrosa in Brest region in a religious family of farmers. June 1, 1945, the day of his birth, was memorized by all the villagers because the fire happened then. If was said that Alexei's mother look it for a God's sign then, and understood that her son would he a great man.
        As for his father, Vasili Fedorovich Kuzmich, he came from an ancient noble family. He died when the boy was a year and a half because of the wounds he had got at the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
        Alexandra Maksimovna had to bring up her seven children alone relying on God, hard work and kind people. Sisters got interested in needlework. Despite of the difficulties they used to sing at home. But the main recollections of Alexei's childhood were connected with the most respectable man in Ihe village, Rubanovich Analoly Paulavich, an artist and a friend of his father. He wan really a very interesting, well-educated and highly-cultured man, who had got his education in Warsaw, Paris and Viena. The boy and the artist became devoted friends and it was Rubanovich who acquainted Alexei with art. He heard the names of Titian, Velasques, Van Gogh and saw their reproductions for the first time in his life. And there was one more man who helped to develop the abilities of the gifted boy. lie was Alexei's cousin, Slepan Kuzmich, a talented amateur artist.
        Very soon senior children started their independent life. Alexei was fond of travelling. And in 1962 a 16-year old boy went to Krasnoyarsk, where his distant relatives lived. He worked there, attending the art studio. After the army service in 1968 he returned to Belarus to live and work in Minsk. Here he began his systematic art education. At first he studied at the studio of a remarkable teacher and artist Baranovsky Anatoly Vasilievich and then at the Theatrical - Art Institute were V. Sukhoverkhov, P. Kvorholev, N.Voronov were his teachers. A.Kuzmich adopted free style of painting from N.Voronov. The lessons of A.Baranovsky, whom Alexei considered the best, one made a great impression on the young artist, both professionally and spiritually.
        After graduating from the Institute the artist led an active creative life. Since 1975 Kuzmich has been a participant of many art exhibitions. In 1981 People's artist of Belarus L.Shmeljov and Honoured Art Workers P.Krokhalev and I.Stasevich recommended Kuzmich to the Artists' Union. The same year his personal exhibition was held. The pictures of Alexei Kuzmich were brought by the State Museum of our Republic and abroad. The present exhibition houses Kuzmich's works of the last decade and gives us the opportunity to estimate the artist's talent and potential.

News, art exhibitions

        June 21 - July 29, 2001 in Minsk Palace of arts took place an exhibition of A. Kuzmich's paintings "In beams of raised Madonnas" (Republic of Belarus, Minsk).