Copy of Biography

A painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and award winner of Jackson Pollock's Foundation – Evgeny Chubarov was one of the most enigmatic artists of our days.

EVGENY CHUBAROV

(1934–2012)

A painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and award winner of Jackson Pollock's Foundation – Evgeny Chubarov was one of the most enigmatic artists of our days.

Evgeny Chubarov was born on 1 December 1934 in the village of Lower Bobino, Mechetlinskiy district of Bashkiria (USSR). Artist's passion for drawing and painting appeared in his childhood, under the influence of his father. In 1951, wishing to obtain a more stable and prestigious profession, Chubarov moved to Zlatoust and enrolled at Metal Engraving vocational school there. Within three years, the artist studied jewellery and design of decorative weapons. After graduating Chubarov spent five years serving in the Baltic fleet navy.

In 1959, Evgeny Chubarov went to Saratov, and then to Zagorsk (now — Sergiev Posad), where he worked in the restoration workshop of sculptor Dmitry Tsaplin. In 1963 artist's paintings the „March" and the „Factory Landscape" appeared at the exhibition of young artists in Moscow.

In 1970-80's Chubarov worked on a series of powerful multi-figure ink compositions on paper. On a compositional level they inherit Christ Carrying the Cross by Bosch (1515–1516), the expressionism of Boris Grigoriev in his Faces of Russia (1920–30s) and Pavel Filonov's analytical experiments.

In 1986 Chubarov was admitted to the Union of Artists of the USSR (Artist's Union of USSR). The Soviet part of Chubarov's biography is not rich in external events and does not indicate that the artist tried to gain a foothold within the Underground movement: his name does not appear in the lists of artists trying to exhibit independently.

Work in progress at Evgeny Chubarov's Berlin studio, 1996

In May 1988 at the invitation of the ambitious art dealer Gary Tatintsian the artist went to Berlin, where he lived and worked for eight years.

This period witnessed the last transformation of his artistic style. From expressionism Chubarov went into pure abstraction, working in a unique style, introducing the alphabet and rhythm of individual parts with simple abstract painting structure.

Gary Tatintsian

Enterpreneur, venturous art dealer, CEO of Gary Tatintsian Gallery

«I've chosen Chubarov because of his capacity to reflect, to react to what he sees, what he is told or suggested. Every one of his paintings is a universe of many other worlds, a macro world where every element of the micro world is absolutely genius and precise. Chubarov is extremely sensitive to the history and experience of art; he is in constant dialogue with new cultures that surround him. When he lived in a Russian province, he made art that came out of a very traditional Russian consciousness, deprived of intellectual culture but inspired by its mysticism. While working in the West, Chubarov worked among many catalogues and books, and yet he strove to create something totally new and not imitate what already existed. He maneuvered between figurative and abstract art. It was a kind of slalom. As a result, Chubarov separated himself entirely from his antecedents. Not wanting to compete with history, he went in a direction no one had ever explored before.»

Work in progress at Evgeny Chubarov's Berlin studio, 1996

The artist has refused close contact with the canvas, which is characteristic of abstract expressionism turning a picture into fixation of gesture as in Pollock's works, or into speculative space of pure colour, as in Rothko's paintings. Chubarov managed to concentrate on the painstaking creation of non-figurative painting primarily as a thing, an object in different dimensions, from the ornamental to the psychological. The transition to the multilayered abstraction, more optimistic in comparison with Soviet period works, and the deep step out of limits of narrative art, emphasised internal independence of the artist of a western-cultural context in which he worked in.

At group exhibitions, Chubarov's works were exhibited together with the paintings of classic artists of the twentieth century — Mel Bochner, Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, Damien Hirst, Peter Halley and Stephan Balkenhol.

Chubarov considered himself the heir of the Russian archaic culture, drawing a parallel between his technique and the ideas of Malevich's Black Square. Working in his unique style, Chubarov embodied in his paintings the idea of a new era's philosophy, visually identifying energy of the world around him.

In the beginning of the 90s Chubarov became the scholar of fund of Pollock-Krasner. After Berlin Chubarov lived for a short time in New York. In 1996 he returned to Moscow outskirts.

In 2012 Evgeny Chubarov died in Mytishchi, the Moscow region.

The works of Evgeny Chubarov may be found in permanent collections of the Pushkin State Museum (Moscow), the National Centre for Modern Art (Moscow), the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the Museum of Modern Art (Moscow), the Rutgers University Museum (New Jersey) and Osthaus Museum Hagen.

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