Robert Venosa - Visionary Art and Psychedelic Surrealism

Robert Venosa (January 21, 1936 – August 9, 2011) was an American artist who resided in Boulder, Colorado, USA. He studied with what are termed the New Masters. His artworks reside in collections around the world
"Robert Venosa studied painting technique with Mati Klarwein in New York, andErnst Fuchs in Vienna, both of whom are proponents of the Misch Technique (alsoknown as the Master's Technique) discovered by the seventeenth-century Flemishmasters Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, which utilizes the system of painting in tempera and oil glazes.This technique is perfect for painting the crystalline worlds that Venosa envisions: Light goes through the surface oil glazes, bounces off the white tempera underpainting and comes back out hitting the eye with the illusion of transparent depth.As with most artists, Venosa took elements of what Fuchs and Klarwein taught and added his own personal touch to arrive at a style - ever evolving - the uniqueness of which is evident in the following catalog of his work."(venosa.com)

Surrealism Leonid Purygin

Leonid Purygin (Born:  1951 - Died:   1995 ) was born in a small village close to Moscow in 1951.  Leonid Anatolevich Purygin grew up as the son of a toy factory director and became a self-trained painter, representing the 'Art Brut' movement.  His color-intensive style was deeply inspired by Russian popular art, impressions of the fantasy toy world of his childhood and Tolstoi's poetry of Buratino.

 Purygin's early works were rather limited to regular formats, but over the time they grew larger and turned into altars comprising different parts.  Purygin received international recognition in 1988, when some of his works were sold in an auction for Russian avant-garde art at Sotheby's.  In the following year he emigrated to New York.(askart.com)

 In 1989 Purygin moved to the NY, USA, where succeed with the support of Eduard Nakhamkin Gallery. When he came in Mscow in 1992 he made the exhibition of contemporary Russian naive art and a special gallery that could support the young artists, who were close to him. He also published three books wrote in the manner of “stream of consciousness” (Hrenoviny. Little novels. 1990; Cosmic fool girl. 1993; Publiya. 1993).Purygin died from heart attack in Moscow.(.art-story.com)

 

Russian nonconformist artist Vladimir Lisunov

Vladimir Lisunov (21 March 1940 – 27 July 2000) — Russian nonconformist artist, member of the Leningrad unofficial art tradition of the 1960s–80s, poet, philosopher, romantic, mystic. Known as Lis among artists and close friendsVladimir Lisunov was born in Leningrad on the spring equinox 21 March 1940.Vladimir Lisunov's early childhood took place during the war years, and he and his mother and sister had to live through the Nazi Siege of Leningrad, and also through bombardment and air raids of the besieged city. At the age of nine he began drawing, learnt to play the violin and wrote poetry, but by the age of twelve he had realised that his vocation was painting.

 He worked in the Leningrad Kirov Theatre of Opera and ballet, where he created sets, sketches of costumes, and make upmake up. He made several sketches of costumes for the ballerinas Natalia Makarova and Alla Osipenko. He earned extra money by making toys out of papier-mâché, which he decorated with paint. He also decorated porcelain in the Leningrad Porcelain Factory.

 Vladimir Lisunov's work went against Soviet Ideology's notions of art. For this reason he was forbidden to work as an artist. Attempts to organise official exhibitions of his work were unsuccessful. He was turned down even at the very initial stages of negotiations. In the mid 1960s, having begun to exhibit his work illegally, he came under the radar of the KGB, and as a result his personal exhibitions were smashed up, and his paintings barbarically destroyed by members of the militia. But in spite of the bans, threats and hounding on the part of the KGB, Vladimir Lisunov continued to work, and in 1970–71 took part in several joint exhibitions in the studio of the artist Vladimir Ovchinnikov, which were also smashed up by members of the militia. In 1975, Lisunov planned to take part in an exhibition of avant-gardists in the "Nevsky Palace of Culture", but on the eve of the opening he was arrested by members of the KGB, and as a result he spent several days in a cell in the Bolshoy Dom on Liteyny Avenue. In this way, Vladimir Lisunov's participation in the exhibition was sabotaged. But it was there, in the confines of the KGB, sitting in a cell, Vladimir Lisunov used a pencil to draw on paper a sketch which he later used when painting the picture 'The fugitive', which became a 'calling card' of his work. Unfortunately, most of Vladimir Lisunov's paintings were destroyed by members of the Soviet Militia, with the sanction of the KGB, during the destruction of his exhibitions.
Right up until 1985, Vladimir Lisunov was forced to be in a constant battle with the authorities as he attempted to assert his right to exhibit his works.
“     None of Leningrad's official artists in the era of stagnation went through such pressure on the part of the authorities as Lisunov did. Between 1969 and 1985 he did not have the opportunity to take part in a single official exhibition. The exception was only two or three small exhibits in private homes.     ”Natalia Reginskaya.Wikipedia

Fantastic realism Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs (February 13, 1930 – November 9, 2015) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, singer and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1972, he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed. The villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988.(Wikipedia)
The universal artist from Vienna, Austria became world famous as graphic artist, painter, sculptor, designer, stage designer, architect, composer and poet. He created a gigantic number of etchings and an equal comprehensive amount of oil paintings and aquarells. In the chapel of parish church St.Egid in Klagenfurt he created monumental frescos to the Apocalypse of John. Beside numerous small-scale sculptures and reliefs Ernst Fuchs created a huge number of life-sized and larger than life-sized sculptures. He designed furniture, tiles, porcelain, jewellery, medallions, tapestry, carpets, fabrics and also costumes and stage decorations for Parsifal, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, the Magic Flute, Hoffmanns Narratives The Bat and The Golem. Various substantial building projects like a hotel in St. Veit an der Glan or a church at "Thal bei Graz", Austria and a number of glass mosaic fountains were built after his designs. He composed operas and produced a number of records and CD´s. Ernst Fuchs wrote poems, children’s books und fairy-tales, illustrated numerous books, for example, the Bible, and wrote theoretical works about art- and architecture, as well as an autobiography.
He was in contact with important artists of his time like Dali, Hundertwasser and Leonard Bernstein.

 His undisputed best known work is his own museum; a Villa in Vienna built by Austrian architect Otto Wagner, which he transformed into a fantastic Fuchs museum. Here the visitor will find a representative cross-section of Ernst Fuchs’s work. In the area surrounding the house he created a marvellous sculpture park, where an exceptional well house with basin of a fountain built by the artist out of glass mosaic is situated.

 Ernst Fuchs was not only commonly known through his outstanding and versatile talent as an artist, his life was totally unconventional and coined by constant ups and downs. He spent his childhood and adolescent years as underdog chased by the NS-regime in poverty, acquired enormous wealth in the 1970s, lost everything but regained everything soon later. For some time he lived and painted in a monastery, and fathered before and after this time sixteen children with seven wives. His family car was in the 1960s a tiny Puch-Fiat and in the 70s he owned a golden Rolls Royce Phantom, which he fitted with his own intarsia and painted ceiling. Muses, models and lovers always surrounded him.

 Extremes determined his life and work. God, Eros, knight, death and the Devil! The genius always moves between extremes and even as a83-year-old man does not come to rest. He always was unloved and not understood by a lot of people, but he has got a big family and a worldwide fan community. Three generations of artists all around the world are already his students and artistic successors.(ernstfuchs-zentrum.com)

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