Art Bastion Miami, global art agency and gallery, will be hosting the first retrospective of the ‘twice forgotten’ Russian artist, Boris Chetkov (1926 – 2010). The exhibited works, twenty portraits and five additional genre paintings from his first mature period (1966 – 1989), are on generous loan from the Hoffman Art Institutefounded by Peter Hoffman, Jr. It is the largest private collection of Chetkov paintings, many never-before-seen by the public. Boris Chetkov: Portraits will debut on Saturday, 7p.m. – 10 p.m. Feb. 21st, at a media and V.I.P. showing.
Opening the exhibition will be Russian art historian and broadcast journalist, Rosie Rockel, who has co-curated this thought-provoking exhibit with the Hoffman Art Institute. Ms. Rosie Rockel regularly presents arts coverage and is considered one of the leading critical voices on Russian 20th century and contemporary art.
Mr. Peter Hoffman, Jr., will be inaugurating the show, in addition to local and international Modern Art experts. They will consider the techniques and lasting relevance of Chetkov’s portraits, that depict the duality – public and private persona – and duplicity that living under communism engenders, a highly relevant topic in Miami today with Cuban/USA relations thawing.
Spanning three decades, Boris Chetkov: Portraits, brings together 20 important works from the zenith of Chetkov’s long career working in Russia during one of the most tumultuous periods in 20th-century history. The exhibition includes bold works created during Khrushchev’s Thaw of the 1960s, through his years painting in secret while working officially as a glass artist, up to his paintings made during the liberal glasnost years of the 1980s.
The portraits reveal the innovation and rigor with which Chetkov set about his work, deftly conjuring an image from rough patches of thickly applied paint to create profoundly psychological portraits. The portraits, such as Eye of the Falcon, which transfixes with a single piercing eye, or Woman in Headdress, called up from an exquisite palette of sea-green and umber, pay testimony to his skill and dedication as an artist, persevering alone during a time when individual difference was discouraged under the Russian regime.
Many of the portraits in the exhibition were made during Chetkov’s prodigious years working as a Chief Glass Artist at a glass factory near Novgorod, Russia. Working clandestinely, as he did not have “official” artist status, Chetkov chose to depict complex, distorted figures who present a stark contrast to the honed physiques and even features of the idealized Soviet man and woman of state-sanctioned Socialist Realism.
“Chetkov’s unique vision of the world is both private and connected to the deepest themes of human spirituality and it almost demands you to engage with it,” said Peter Hoffman, Jr., founder of the Hoffman Art Institute www.hoffmanartinstitute.org