In 2000, the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art presented a large personal exhibition of Andrey Kovalenko. About 80 paintings are shown.
The artist at that time was 24 years old.
“Trial loneliness”
At the exhibition of the young artist Andrey Yuryevich Kovalenko in the Museum of Western and Oriental art somehow immediately remembered the old anecdote about Mendelssohn. Large financier, banker Mendelssohn was the son of a famous philosopher and at the same time the father famous composer. Years passed, and he used to complain: “I used to be called not otherwise as the “son of Mendelssohn”, now – the “father of Mendelssohn.” I look somehow an impostor, honestly!”
Andrey’s destiny is to be a son. Artist: parents are not chosen. It’s like standing under load and arrow, like it or not. The situation is tragic and almost irreparable task conditions. But, perhaps, to look at the matter in a simpler way, without dramatizing? In the very In fact, “family heirlooms” are not such a bad thing, if you dispose of them without strain, remaining himself and at the same time time – the son of his father. After all, it’s not so bad that an apple comes from an apple tree falls not far (you might think that the pear does not fall, but flies). For example, I strongly I declare that nature has completely rested on me, and my little Fedor is much more likely.
Personally, I believe in Andrew for many reasons. First, he never “went under maitre ”: someone who, but Yura is not the kind of person to clean himself under him. He has amazing laconic poetic “instruction” to Andrey: run, fall down, break down, get up, run again fall again break down and get up in the workshop talk to God, his.
Yes, speaking without coquetry, straightforwardly, Yuri Andreevich didn’t really take care of your child. It can be said that he let it go by itself – so that it floated, flowing around its rhizomes and snags, some mossy banks of forgotten reservoirs, carried out into the open space of their wonder-yudo-fish-whales, their flowers and leaves.
Month of “plein air” in the year: son and father in Priluki – dense, wet, reserved. Yura brought Andryusha by the hand to Lisovyk. “Uncle, are you Lisovyk?” — Kovalenko Jr. I sincerely believed in all this good “devil” of the Priluki forests and swamps.
And Lesovik is a very real figure: Petr Antonovich Pasechnichenko (1911-1986), great artist of the Kyiv school Peter Trofimenko. It was Yurin and An Dreev Dersu-Uzal: led through forests, steep slopes of Uday and other unknown science of the tributaries of the Sula (Dry, Rotten, Ore, Radkovka, Solokha, Netyaga, Sleporod, etc. and etc.).
To this day, Andrey understands mushrooms better than his father, rooted, maybe not as much in Priluki themselves as in this unpredictable thicket wandering with must.
Because the colors are paler than the father’s – the colors of the marsh attracting with a boa eye raw materials Everything grows from this leaven, breaks through the thistle at least to “partly cloudy” and above, towards the sun. Under the tent of the withered hooked branches lurks a powerful “Solstice” – a spherical life trajectory, cycle, filled with meaning, self-sufficient. I think Andrew here he intuitively chooses the route: not “only forward!” to the unknown limit, and – forward, but hurried, each time returning to itself.
Everything that is done by a young artist with pleasure, “on his breath”, and turns out to be the most successful – so the most charming are children conceived in love: Gustynya”, the same “Solstice”, “Beekeeper”, “Sorcerer”, “Violinist (Father)”, “Tavern”, “Evening” (painting), “Priluki”, “Temple”, “Dream”, “Meeting of Friends” (graphics).
..I watched reputable artists peering at the works of Kovalenko Jr., art historians – Yuri Egorov, Elena Shelestova, Orest Sleshinsky, Louise Shcheglov, Sergei Savchenko. There were replicas of paternal energy, courage and span. Valentin Sirenko noted the openness, openness of Andrey, his desire imbibe, imbibe, imbibe. To, having absorbed, grow, soar. rise above dense virgin soil, to see it “from space” of turquoise Gustynsky domes – such authentic, reliable, tangible painting of Andrey Yuryevich. We spoke and other: about influences, apologetics, “isms”, the audacity of a youth who encroached on three spacious halls, kaleidoscopic exposition, patronage and so on. The comments are partly correct.
Of course, the sympathies, passions of the artist (who has not yet turned twenty four) are obvious – like, say, the typological “Novikov graphics” on average hall. What of that? We absorb in order to move on. For the mosaic to form a panel, so that the fragments melt into breccia, so that a whole can be made from the components. There is no other way. As for insolence… What is it: Ignoring a corporation? Unauthorized flight? What are we talking about? About the father, to whom the son is more and more – prop:..
Yura likes to say that he and Andrei are soloists. Loners, so to speak. And that’s right. This is the line of fate. And I want to say to Kovalenko-son: “Andryusha! You will always be one. How is your dad. Alone alone in your Priluki raw materials, over the “failures” near Gustynsky monastery. Hear one! You will be alone in your leapfrog numerous (kind, sincere, devoted) friends of sailors and charming pirates in red ties and cheerful kerchiefs tied on one side. You will guard terra incognita in his “crow’s nest”. Because it’s predestined. Because you are your father’s son!
“Odessa Bulletin”, April 22, 2000
Everything that is done by a young artist with pleasure, “on his breath”, and turns out to be the most successful – so the most charming are children conceived in love: Gustynya”, the same “Solstice”, “Beekeeper”, “Sorcerer”, “Violinist (Father)”, “Tavern”, “Evening” (painting), “Priluki”, “Temple”, “Dream”, “Meeting of Friends” (graphics).
..I watched reputable artists peering at the works of Kovalenko Jr., art historians – Yuri Egorov, Elena Shelestova, Orest Sleshinsky, Louise Shcheglov, Sergei Savchenko. There were replicas of paternal energy, courage and span. Valentin Sirenko noted the openness, openness of Andrey, his desire imbibe, imbibe, imbibe. To, having absorbed, grow, soar. rise above dense virgin soil, to see it “from space” of turquoise Gustynsky domes – such authentic, reliable, tangible painting of Andrey Yuryevich. We spoke and other: about influences, apologetics, “isms”, the audacity of a youth who encroached on three spacious halls, kaleidoscopic exposition, patronage and so on. The comments are partly correct.
Of course, the sympathies, passions of the artist (who has not yet turned twenty four) are obvious – like, say, the typological “Novikov graphics” on average hall. What of that? We absorb in order to move on. For the mosaic to form a panel, so that the fragments melt into breccia, so that a whole can be made from the components. There is no other way. As for insolence… What is it: Ignoring a corporation? Unauthorized flight? What are we talking about? About the father, to whom the son is more and more – prop:..
Yura likes to say that he and Andrei are soloists. Loners, so to speak. And that’s right. This is the line of fate. And I want to say to Kovalenko-son: “Andryusha! You will always be one. How is your dad. Alone alone in your Priluki raw materials, over the “failures” near Gustynsky monastery. Hear one! You will be alone in your leapfrog numerous (kind, sincere, devoted) friends of sailors and charming pirates in red ties and cheerful kerchiefs tied on one side. You will guard terra incognita in his “crow’s nest”. Because it’s predestined. Because you are your father’s son!
“Odessa Bulletin”, April 22, 2000
