INDIAN INK ON PAPER
Drawings
Before Chubarov became known for his sculptures, he was known in the professional circles for his graphic works, which he was producing at enourmous rate during all his life
until his death in 2012

"The very creation of the world was a sexual gesture and sexuality permeates everything in it. In my drawings space is replaced with a sexual gesture. I was particularly aware of this space as a state, as energy in my Berlin paintings. When I draw I move the sheet of paper round like a disk or a potter's wheel. It's as if I revolve myself, too, while I draw and also revolve my picture. When once Kandinsky saw his picture upside down he understood what abstract composition was really like."

- Evgeny Chubarov


Indian ink on paper
60 x 43 cm
Chubarov was invited to exhibit at "alternative art" exhibitions rather early in his career. (It was too early at that time to use the term "unofficial art" because 1962, when he exhibited his work together with some Moscow artists at the cinema houses Illusion and Udarnik, was a borderline year when illusions were still alive regarding the good will of the authorities and their willingness to abandon the totalitarian, one-dimensional ideology in favor of peaceful co-existence among different trends in art.)
Chubarov did not address specific characters, only anonymous figures involved in wild merrymaking. Such merrymaking is characterized not only by erotica, but also by blatant sexual acts.
Chubarov accentuates individual body parts, both male and female, that are involved in sexual games. In these provocative paintings, we find primal forms of human life. Civilization is turned off. We are taken back to prehistoric times in a time machine, where we become observers in a world that never ceases to amaze. Do these pictures reflect the aspirations of the artist? In his final years, did he dream, like Picasso, of a turbulent world surrounded by a multitude of men and women? Are these love games, which always have an inherently violent nature, a reflection of our civilization? Do we not want to talk about this? Does it destroy our intimate world? In the final years of Picasso's work, there were more and more wild scenes. His series dedicated to artists and art models are the best evidence of his resistance to advancing infirmity. Chubarov's works in ink really get to the point. They demonstrate a rampage, a drama that overcomes the dominance of the world, in a way that may seem surrealistic. Nevertheless, we find a lot of truth in these works, when we try to pass them off as our own fantasies.

- Tayfun Belgin, Director of Osthaus Museum Hagen
1984, Ink on paper, 44 x 59 cm

Images and text content courtesy: Chubarov Foundation
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