«Исправи, Господи, путь мой…» 2011 дерево, масляная пастель 385x1130
Artist Giovanni
"Lead me, o Lord, in Thy righteousness…" 2011 wood, oil pastel
Giovanni belongs to those artists, whose creative development lacks a clear border between childish "drawing" and "grown-ups'" art, when "unlearnedness", i. e. lack of official systematic education, becomes an independent aesthetic value. Mainly unconscious "naivety" has resulted in creative achievements which impress the audience quite sophisticated in arts.
Giovanni can be characterized by an awesome attitude towards the material, and this attitude mainly predetermines the artistic concept. At first, sauce (together with sanguine and charcoal) was such a material for him, then its place was taken by oil pastel. Interestingly enough, Giovanni does not like paints or paint brushes, nor does he like terminological definitions: "drawing" or "painting", claiming his type of art simply as a childish drawing.
It seems that Giovanni denies the achievements of "scientific" painting of the impressionists, that colour of each object has a specific value for him, and each object has a specific colour. At the same time, it is implied that all colours are simple and not complex (only there are quite a lot of them, and not all of them have already their names).
Giovanni believes that landscape as an artistic genre can not be "devoid of an idea" (although "beautiful"). As the nature is intrinsically meaningful, so meaningful should be its reflection in the art.
Each period of time has its inherent colour for Giovanni. E. g., black and yellow February, blue June, copper and green July. This colouring reflects interrelation of natural phenomena with inner emotions and life experiences. The artist believes that in this way he follows in some degree Claude Monet.
Images of nature become a visual interpretation of images of music, especially of chants of the Saturday all-night vigil in the works of Giovanni. The artist has got a passion for decomposition of musical pieces into separate colours: blue, red, golden, black and, finally, purple. He has a special attitude to the purple. It is a colour between violet and brown, but not at all wine-red.
Having once discovered for himself oil pastel, Giovanni began to examine its possibilities, making "imitations" of oil paintings of Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, McNeill Whistler and watercolor paintings of Maximilian Voloshin, until he finally found his own way.
For Giovanni it is very important not only with what material, but also on what material to draw. He made his way in search of a suitable material from packing cardboard with ragged edges (it is very "romantic"!) through primed canvas on cardboard (likeness of the oil painting) to the laminated particle board, overcoming even greater resistance of the material.
Giovanni is Ivan Rytov (Иван Рытов), born in Moscow in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Zelenograd. Painting is the only meaning of his life.
