Meet the Artist: Dmitri Belyukin

Dmitri Belyukin (1962-), Member of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts

It might seem an easy task at first to give a comprehensive definition to Dmitri Belyukin’s creativity, since we have come across a brightly shaped personality.

Dmitri was lucky enough to be born in the family of a talented graphic artist, Anatoly Ivanovich Belyukin, who belonged to the constellation of outstanding book masters trained by V. Favorsky. Possessing a remarkable understanding of the text, they maintained a high standard of book creation. The artist’s mom, Ksenia Nikolaevna, a literature editor, encouraged her son’s interest in history and literature. With his father as his main teacher, Dmitri started to illustrate Yevgeny Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin in 1998. It is a refined edition of the “handy” format that is very pleasant to hold in your hands, and is created according to the classic specifications of book design.

Dmitri Belyukin is always very precise in his approach to history. All of his paintings are backed with hard work in researching the era to be reproduced, focusing on the background events and material culture. Hence, his creations are always authentic, but this authenticity, overwhelming, for instance, in White Russia in Exile, fades into the background with the passage of years. It was replaced by a metaphorical method that provides psychological, not subject-oriented, authenticity; and when we mention that the artist works in the classical style, we mean he aims for psychological authenticity in the long run. The metaphor combines the details into a unified image that rises above ordinary things, including historical facts, and inclines towards lyricism in some cases, and towards epic poetry in others.

Olga Kostina

Chief Editor
Russkoye Iskusstvo (Russian Art)

http://www.gallery-worldwide.com/artist/DMITRY_BELYUKIN.html

Editor’s Note:

Dmitri Belyukin is the creator of White Russia in Exile (1992-94), which is the source of the header art on this website.

A World of Lost Brightness, Part Three (music by Chopin)

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Part Three of the portraiture of Valentin Serov. This rounds out this series of Serov’s portraits and human studies. No doubt, you can see why he was considered the premier Russian portraitist of his day. In fact, he died of a heart attack in 1911 whilst he was hurrying to a sitting with a client. God was good. He spared Serov the pain of seeing his beloved country crash down into ruin some six years later. I used my sole Serov still life as an appropriate end to this cycle. The painting before the flowers is A Girl with Peaches (1887), my absolute favourite piece in our Russian oeuvre. The music is the Nocturne in C sharp minor, op 27 nr 1 by Frédéric Chopin played by Yevgeny Kissin. All three Serov videos use Chopin nocturnes performed by Kissin for two reasons. Firstly, it provides a thematic bridge between the three parts. Secondly, I used nocturnes because “night” was about to fall on Serov’s world… “a world of lost brightness”. The sun didn’t fully rise again for 75 years.

BMD

A World of Lost Brightness, Part Two (music by Chopin)

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Part Two of the portraiture of Valentin Serov. His famous portrait of Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich the New Martyr is at the end of this programme. The portrait preceding that painting is of his daughter, Grand Princess St Olga Nikolaevna. They were murdered by the Reds in Yekaterinburg on 4/17 July 1918. Unfortunately, there were those in the diaspora who attacked the canonisation of the New Martyrs on sophistical grounds. Fittingly, those who did so are now undergoing a severe internal crisis. God DOES see and judge! The music is the Nocturne in D flat major, op 27 nr 2 by Frédéric Chopin played by Yevgeny Kissin.

BMD

A World of Lost Brightness, Part One (music by Chopin)

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The portraiture of Valentin Serov. Serov was one of the Russian Impressionists and was the most renowned portraitist in fin du sieclè Petersburg. He was known for his bright palette and the lightness of his paintings. It was truly a “world of lost brightness”, for this was the final stage before the revolution (although no knew that, of course). Contrary to what many believe, it was not poor peasants or workers who made the revolution, it was Westernised intellectuals who had lost their Russian roots. Oddly enough, some of them fled the Bolshevik takeover and settled in France, where they formed a rebel church that has infected portions of the Orthodox Church in the USA (although it is dying out, thankfully). The music is the Nocturne in A flat major, op 32 nr 2 by Frédéric Chopin played by Yevgeny Kissin.

BMD