We present the project of the exposition of the works of the legendary representative of St. Petersburg neo-academism Bella Matveeva called "Wave Genetics", prepared by our gallery for the international contemporary art fair COSMOSCOW 2022.
Exhibitions
Venue: Tavricheskaya street house 35, "Ivanova Tower"
Time: June 26 - August 21
Year: 2014
BELLA MATVEEVA «BELLA VITA. RETROSPECTIVE
Bella Matveeva is an emeritus professor at the New Academy of Fine Arts, founded by Timur Novikov in the 1990s.
The New Academy succeeded in creating exceptional art within the carnival atmosphere in the surreal time of the collapse of the empire. The phenomenon of neo-academicism was not simple: the artists took seriously for themselves ideals that seemed forgotten and abandoned forever. The Novikovsky cult of beauty became at the same time an appeal to classical sources and a rebellion against the art of modernism. A step towards the classics was read as provocative retrograde against the frantic pace of an accelerating history. But it was precisely this seeming “stop” in the flow of time that managed to create an artistic whirlwind of incomparable power. The "New Academy" outlined an alternative path that allows for a lush, but smart and ambiguous visualization, which, unlike many other earlier or parallel in time trends in art, loudly and confidently sounded on the international art scene.
Golden and velvety, the images of Bella Matveeva’s works evoke a sensation of a walk in the eastern bazaar, among rich carpets, silk and spices. Large-scale canvases make you remember the carnival myrists, the Madonna of the Renaissance and the spicy Austrian Art Nouveau.
At the exhibition organized by the Art Holding Tatyana Nikitina Gallery, the exhibition presented works created in St. Petersburg over the past 25 years of creative activity. The earliest of them date from the 1980s.
Exhibition catalog: http://artholdingtn.ru/f/catalogue_matveeva_preview.pdf
