Retrospective Ĺxhibition
Evgeny Andreev (1963-2006)
Paintings and small plastic art
April 28, 2009 – May 11, 2009
EVGENY ANDREEV – NENYO was born in 1963 in Sofia. He is the first Bulgarian, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, Norway. He studied painting from Professor Ludvig Eikaas and Prof. Halfdan Ljosne. In the period of 1984-1986 he was an assistant to prof. Eikaas in the setting up and development of a structure class in Airbrush at the Royal Art Academy in Oslo.
)
)
)
)
)
)
IN THE END OF THE 80-ies, following his brilliant start in Norway and after returning to Sofia, Evgeny Andreev quickly managed to confirm his powerful, and at the same time provocative presence, in the art life in our country. In this period, his unique and incomparable interpretation of the Bulgarian medieval painting tradition found expression in non-iconographic compositions of unusual size and colour, made by avangard technique.
His one-man exhibition at Saint Petka Samardjiiska Church in 1994, displayed huge canvases of a daring presentation of faces deprived of their features, and astounding metal plastic art, made of fired cartridges and pieces of arm shells. The message conveyed by the exposition originated from his temper of a seemingly too delicate artist who openly declared his anxiety about the destructive processes of the modern world which ignored the eternal ethical and moral values.
EVGENY ANDREEV is an artist that understands art as a free world in which he has experimented with different styles and techniques of painting and plastic art. His experience has allowed him to look for symbiosis between graphics and collage on one hand, and for the connection between the ethereal exquisiteness of the water colour and the character of the oil colour on the other hand, together with the flexibility and volume of the casting that is typical for sculpture.
Or as he says himself: “Experimenting makes me feel alive in the boundless space of painting. The painting is created via a combination of rituals, traditions, philosophies, faith, thought, feeling, experience, colour, structures. Real abstract impressionism …”
THE MOST EXCUISITE AND DELICATE EXPERIMENT of the painter – painting with a natural pigment that is directly extracted from plant leaves, flowers and stems and is then pressed, allows him to entirely replace the colours and brushes used in traditional painting. Thus he once again expresses his innate feeling of belonging to the enormous design of Nature. And to his insatiable striving to penetrate deeper into the Code of life.
PEOPLE WHO DO NOT KNOW HIM closely would think that he has been somewhat conservative. On the contrary, passing quickly through abstraction, lyrical impression and realistic painting, carried on the wings of his natural boundless optimism, Evgeny Andreev has experimented with any material, new technology, and computer capability in all individual pieces of art and in all different styles. He has materialized his passion for novelty into his own virtual technique, in order to “compress time” with the hope to find “the ultimate” truth. May be for this reason he named one of his paintings I found truth- it was the ultimate truth.
)
)
)
)
)
)
HIS UNUSUAL PERCEPTION OF LIFE and his unconquerable striving to understand deeply the mystery of the connection MAN-NATURE-CREATOR are the truest dimensions of his art that shake up with their impact. They completely uncover the artist’s instinctive nature, obeying full openness, not only in the boundaries of innermost intimacy but also in what seem to be canvas-tearing amazing visions of the past and the future.
EVGENY ANDREEV’S SEVENTH ONE-MAN EXHIBITION comprised 75 paintings and 20 pieces of plastic art, created at different times. So far his art has been displayed in sixteen exhibitions in total - in Sofia, Nessebar, Oslo, Paris, Helsinki, Tokyo. The artist’s paintings and pieces of plastic art also belong to private collections in Bulgaria, Great Britain, Germany, Norway, Russia, USA, Finland, Holland, Japan. During a high-level visit in 2008, a painting by Evgeny Andreev was given as a gift to the King of Norway, Harald the Fifth.
The opening of the exhibition was combined with the presentation of the Road album, dedicated to the work of EVGENY ANDREEV – NENYO.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
