Viacheslav Mihailov
Oil on canvas
25x30cm
"With time you get to realise what is important and what is secondary in life."
Viacheslav Mihailov
Born in 1945, Viacheslav graduated from the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts and was awarded the title of Honourary Artist of Russia. He has taken part in over 200 exhibitions, his works are held in over 40 museums, and in private collections in 16 countries around the world.
I am invited to his studio in the old part of Saint Petersburg. The peeling walls and graffiti'd entrance combine in surreal combinations with the beautiful building designs. Layers of life and age manifest in all shades and tones of fading, flaking paint, submerging the entire city into the magic mist of Dostoevsky novels.
Squeezing into the smallest lift I have ever seen, it squeaks and strains to Mihailov's studio. He is reserved but curious about modelling, and takes me into his world - where the outside beauty and bizarreness of Russia is distilled and concentrated into each work. Textured and moody colours absorb the omnipresent intellectual decadent gloom of Saint Petersburg, occasionally lit up by gold from the cathedral domes against a blue sky, reflected in the canals.
We get straight to work. He comments on the quality of museums in different countries; issues of dealing with gallery representatives; and cultural differences on how artists get to work with the gallery; the aims of an artist and their ambitions; and what issues are the most important in the art and life of an artist.
“With time you get to realise what is important and what is secondary in life.”
When I ask him what is the most important understanding he has come to, he smiles through his thick moustache.
“It is a notion everyone has to come to by themselves - you cannot explain it or pass it down to someone”.