"VLADIMIR DUHOVLINOV"

Graduated from Mukhina Academy of Art and Design in Leningrad. Specialized in the industrial design. Worked as a designer.

"We often talk about art's difficult relationship with swiftly changing time, with a degree of freedom or no freedom. I think Vladimir Duhovlinov is hardly depended on this at all. For him the field of tension exists purely between the concept and the extent to which it can be realized.

The artist can worry endlessly about the canvas, endLessLy getting closer to the desired result and degree of completion. Least of all he's aiming to convey the external impressions of the outside world, which doesn't mean to say that he is a convert to pure form. Paul Klee's comment, that one should not reflect what is seen, but make it visible, is particularly appropriate for his art.

I did not recall Klee by an accident; the bolt experiment made by this artist, one of the titans of the 20th century art, was balanced and ennobled by a reticence, a severe and refined taste, by the high seriousness of the content. It is precisely the tradition Vladimir Duhovlinov seems to be close to. He has remained devoted to a spiritual and flexible form of the intellect. His art is imbued with meaning, with joy and sorrow; in short - with everything, which is so conspicuously, absent at a time when most artists are distracted by questions of pure form and post-modern multi-significant interpretations.

I think, this young painter has become a Master earlier than many others. This is not merely a question of the standard of his works (there is undoubtedly still much for him to discover ahead). More importantly, because of the tension and (which is rare in present times) the high seriousness with which he approaches his life and his work: the two things, which are most likely synonymous for him.
At all times such artists has been too rare."

Mikhail German

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