In April our gallery will be hosting an exhibition of works by Gely Korzhev, one of Russia's greatest living artists. The show will include several dozen works from private collections, most of which have never been shown to the public before.

Korzhev (born in 1925) is best known as one of the seminal founders of the Severe Style movement, which contrasted from the more detailed Realist approach of the 1940s and '50s in its minimal and chiseled execution. However, this is an honor that neither he nor Victor Ivanov, another widely accepted father of the movement have accepted, crediting it to an earlier generation of Soviet artist such as Deineka and Petrov-Vodkin.

Each of Korzhev’s canvasses is a truly profound and independent work of art, whether it is on the subject of the Second World War (“the theme of my generation”), an acute social commentary (the “Tyurliki” or monsters series for example – a reaction to the tumultuous early 90s in Russia), biblical themes or one of his stark and beautiful still lives.

He is a man of a complex many-faceted character: he has the clear mind of the philosophers of the past. Tall and bearded he has a likeness to Socrates. He is almost too imposing to speak with.” say his friends, artists Sergey and Alexey Tkachev.

The work of Gely Korzhev has an important place in the collections of Russian museums (the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg for example), although the artist has refused retrospective exhibitions there in the past 20 years. He also did not accept two awards in the post-perestroika era, calling himself “an artist of Socialist Realism”.

Korzhev has achieved high international acclaim featuring among others in the 2005 Guggenheim exhibition "RUSSIA!" and having a retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis in 2008.