Art by Aleksandr Smirnov is realy versatile. He works in different styles and genres to reveal a true way to understanding human nature. To the artist, creative process is communication of his own feelings as objective information reflecting events stored in collective memory of humankind.
Aleksandr Smirnov has always given his works certain meanings dedicated to ontological, historical,religious, and philosophical and ethical matters.
The artist was born in Yerevan, where his family had been evacuated, on 9 April 1947. He spent his childhood and youth in Voronezh Region. After trying his hand at several blue-collar jobs and serving in the army, he entered A.K. Savitskiy Art College in Penza to graduate from it in 1975. He also studied monumental painting art at Kharkov Institute. Aleksandr Smirnov is a member of the Creative Union of Russian Artists and International Art Fund. In 2009 he won «Service of Art» Gold Medal of the International Academy of Culture and Art.
Aleksandr Smirnov creates landscapes, portraits, genre paintings, and religious and symbolic compositions. His landscapes evidently show harmony between nature and the author’s psyche that constantly searches for beauty and truth in routine.
The painter’s landscapes are created in traditions of Russian Realism. The traditions have always drawn Russian artists’ attention to human psyche and amorousness in living environment including boundless Russian expanses and country huts’ interior. His creations boast sincere admiration for beauty and grandeur of nature in Central Russia. He has always depicted what he knows and loves understanding harmonious inner connection between natural world and human inner life, morals of being. Maintaining the first impression of nature, the master finds his intonation and plastic interpretation to suit his state of mind. His skill to get new perception of routine as extraordinarily refracted light in heart and soul, rather than as specularly reflected light, is the artist’s natural gift, psychic subtlety, keen vision, and intuition. Great original painter, he masterly depicts nature creating meaningful and spiritually intense works. Most of the master’s creations include genre paintings exploring life of Russian villages. With special reverence and warmth he creates images of Russian women against rural nature. His portraits of old men and children are marked with penetration into the inner life of people, creation of individual characters, and picturesqueness. The artist demonstrates intense spiritual life of the people, their pulsating thoughts, and bold heart.
A special place in the author’ s art is held by religious and symbolic compositions. Religious plots the artist selects are not just a reason for creating paintings, so they cannot be considered as illustrations of the Holy Writ. Instead they are his thoughts of eternal matters like good and evil, time and eternity, and life and death. They are generalization of his experience in conclusions of Christian teaching formulated by humankind. They are the painter’ s creative confession. According to the Academician V.N. Balobanov, People’ s Artist of Russia, «Works by A. Smirnov are filled with eternal truths and symbols. And to the artist, symbols are combination of the divine and the carnal. So you acquire spiritual vision; people’ s hearts and souls get filled with love and compassion». Aleksandr Smirnov’s art proclaims beauty of the world and explores eternal matters of being. Spiritual energy of his creations and their humanistic charge are opposed to chaos, devastation, anddespondency.
Lyudmila Kandalova, art critic (Печатается по изданию Russian Gallery ХХI _ 7-8- 2010)
