BOOK ABOUT MAI DANTSIG PRESENTED AT RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
25 Nov 15
A new book in the Art Russe book series on 20th century Russian and Soviet artists has been presented at the Russian Academy of Arts. The book is dedicated to the life and work of Mai Dantsig, and is published to mark the 85th anniversary of the outstanding artist.
Written by art historian Pyotr Kozorezenko Jr., the book is the most comprehensive illustrated chronicle of the artist's career to date. It includes portraits, landscapes, sketches and schizzos created by Mai Dantsig in different years. Paintings on the theme of war and reproductions of monumental canvasses «And the World Remembers the Saviors…», «Sunny Continent» and «Guerrilla Ballad» feature prominently in the book, which is based on the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia), the National Art Museum of Belarus (Minsk, Belarus), P. V. Maslennikov Mogilev Regional Art Museum (Mogilev, Belarus) and the Institute of Russian Realist Art (Moscow, Russia). The book is published with the support from Tvotchestvo Publishing House and with the participation of Artkomintern and Klassika Art Bureau.
Mai Dantsig confidently asserted himself in the late 1950s - early 1960s, a period when a new generation of artists with their characteristic sense of personal involvement in what was happening around them and their bright creative individuality emerged in Soviet art.
Doctor of Fine Arts Pyotr Kozorezenko Jr., author of the book:
«When I was about to interview Mai Dantsig, I considered my conversation with him primarily as a source of information for a canonical art-history text. However, communication with the master was so exciting and emotional, that I decided to relay his words in the first person, regretting only that written text can not convey the variety of intonations, which I had the joy of hearing when speaking with the artist in his studio».
The book on Mai Dantsig is the third publication in the ART RUSSE book series dedicated to outstanding Russian and Soviet artists. In 2013, ART RUSSE published a book by art historian Pyotr Kozorezenko Jr., dedicated to the work of Victor Popkov, a Soviet artist of the sixties. In 2014, ART RUSSE published a book by art historian Galina Tuluzakova, about the life and work of the brilliant Russian-American artist, a true virtuoso of the first half of the twentieth century, Nikolai Feshin.