Andrei Kolkoutine is a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. In 1982 Kolkoutine graduated at the Repin Academy of Arts in Leningrad

Leningrad

Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...

, named after Ilya Repin. Currently Kolkoutine lives in southern Russia in the town of Nalchik

Nalchik

Nalchik is the capital city of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, Russia, situated at an altitude of in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains; about northwest of Beslan in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania. It covers an area of...

.
He belongs to the art group " FOSTER BROTHERS " together with two other famous artists - Andrey Efi and Eugeny Lindin.
The medium of his paintings is usually oil on canvas, but Kolkoutine also made a few sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

s and graphic works. Besides Russia, Kolkoutine has made exhibitions in Denmark, Germany, France and other European countries as well as the United States.

Style

Kolkoutine settled into his current characteristic style by the end of the 1980’s in which he mixes traditions from the Russian icons with suprematism

Suprematism

Suprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations...

 from Malevich, cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 and naïve art

Naïve art

Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...

. Kolkoutine states that he sought the special tones of colours which are seen in the old Russian icons, and he developed a method for making these tones by pasting a layer of neutral grey paint on the canvas before painting the colours. Suprematist elements are combined with figurative elements. Distorted buildings and playing cards may appear at the bottom of the paintings as well as Cyrillic letters. Frames in different colours surrounding the motifs are often oblique.

Motifs

Often the motifs are either stylized biblical or simple working people from the Russian province; according to Kolkoutine the biblical characters are in principle the same kind as the provincial people (Bjørnager, 2006). The biblical motifs are also a reflection of his origin; they are distinctly orthodox. Jekatarina Seleznjova states that in her opinion the fundamental question asks in his paintings is ”Why are we here?” (Seleznjova, 2007), and thus despite the culturally characteristic motifs Kolkoutine's paintings are supposed to touch something universally human. Kolkoutines paintings are both simple and complicated it is said.

External links

• Homepage of Andrei Kolkoutine
• Homepage of the "Foster Brothers"