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SERGEI CHEPIK
Biography
Born in 1953 (the year of Stalin's death) in Kiev, into a family of artists, Sergei Chepik, the son of a painter and a sculptress, has been conscious of his artistic vocation since early childhood. His exceptional gifts led him, at the age of 20, to St. Petersburg, to study at the world-renowned Repin Academy of Fine Art under the tutelage of Prof. Andrej Mylnikov, himself a pupil of Igor Grabar, one of the leading figures of the World of Art movement. From his long apprenticeship at the academy, Chepik retained a love of professionalism, a taste for excellence and a respect for the great masters which have made him a demanding and scrupulous artist, who considers art a difficult craft which cannot be improvised, which certainly requires talent and a vivid imagination, but ultimately depends on hard work, patience and will.
After graduating in 1978, Chepik was immediately admitted to the Union of Young Artists. Passionately devoted to art, he then sought to master all the genres, from landscape and still-life, inspired by his travels through Russia, to portraiture and above all composition, the most difficult genre in which he most succeeded in remarkable paintings such as Michelangelo (1979-1984), The Tree (1982-1984) and Petrushka (1984-1986).
But his original work had no future in the USSR, for he refused to conform to the demands of an ideology which he was increasingly condemning in canvases such as The Veterans (1987), The Apocalypse (1987-88), The Bell (1987-88) and Pičta (1988). His masterpiece, The House of the Dead (or Madhouse), completed in 1987, was banned from exhibitions. This large-scale composition, an allegorical representation of Soviet society, walled in by its own lies, paranoia, and despair, was the striking and cruel mirror which the artist, both as a conscience and a witness, was holding forth to his compatriots.
Chepik then decided to emigrate with the help and complicity of his future French wife Marie-Aude Albert. On the lst of August 1988, he arrived in Paris, with no luggage other than his canvases, his father's easel, his will to succeed, and the banished House of the Dead, which, three months later, won a gold medal and received public acclaim at the Salon d'Automne.
Chepik's first Parisian painting was a homage to Notre-Dame (The White Angel, 1988) and soon Paris was to become a favorite theme for the exiled painter: the large scale glorious views of the banks of the Seine (The Pont Neuf, The City, The Chimeras of Notre-Dame, 1992-1995), the strange and unsavory world of Pigalle bars and cabarets (Calcutta, The Queen of the Night, 1988, Eva, 1992, The Mermaids of Pigalle, 1996), the poetic vision of street artists and outcasts (The Bench, 1988, Nocturne, 1991, Cabaret, 1992), the eternal and lyrical face of the French capital (La Parisienne, 1988, Trocadero, 1992).
As new impressions and experiences in the west developed, new themes appeared such as boxing (Boxers, 1990, Fight and Win, 1991), bull-fights (Tauromachia, 1992, Spanish Triptych, 1992-97, Picador, 1999, Carmen, 1999) and sunflowers (Hommage to Van Gogh, 1993, Sunflowers, 1995, Sunflowers from St-Remy de Provence, Sunflowers from Arles, 1997, Big Sunflowers, 1999).
Russia however remained the main source of inspiration for this searing visionary: through large compositions, year after year, Chepik resumed his anxious exploration of Russian history in the XX century and questioned the tragic destiny of the Russian people: Memories (1989), The Station (1990), Troika (1991), The First Circle or The Bath (1991-92), Red Square (1993-1994), Russian Roulette (1995), Chechnya (1997), The Cross of Russia (1999) are testimonials to this passionate and painful interest in his homeland which, as for writer Nicholas Gogol, could only be understood and loved by moving away. Also, like Nureyev, whose portrait Chepik completed in 1993 just before painting Baroness Margaret Thatcher), Chepik realized one day that he had to "choose freedom" and live far from Russia precisely to be able to, serve it better.
In 1995, Chepik returned for the first time to Russia since emigrating, but the so-called democratic society he met there caused him irritation and sorrow. Once again he felt the Russian people had been betrayed in their hopes and expectations. Was that feeling the starting point of the huge composition Chepik started as soon as he returned from St. Petersburg? Golgotha (1995-1996) is a renewed and unique interpretation of the universal theme of the Crucifixion in which the artist focuses on the attitudes and expressions of those who betrayed Jesus and are attending his agony facing the holy crest which spreads its shadow on the sun burnt ground.
As well as Golgotha, the output of the last years' work illustrates Chepik's exceptional. capacity to renew, even recreate the important themes of Western painting. However important Russia is, it is not the only source of inspiration for this enquiring artist. The Black Venus, Adam and Eve, Icarus, King Lear, The Trojan War, the Prophet (all 1997) are testimony to the ambition of a painter who prefers to question Velasquez or Dürer, and tackle the masterpieces of European painting rather than to succumb, as so many artists today, to the easy temptation of nihilism and "table rase". Many -of his works are multifaceted visions of the human condition which offer us the possibility to think and interpret beside the title which is not a definite label, rather an invitation to association and reflection: King Lear, The Prophet, The Foreign Towns, Morituri Te Salutant, Strip-Tease (1997), The Stairs (1998) convey the tragic loneliness of the human being.
It is not only the variety of themes, the power of imagination, the virtuoso technique, the subtlety of the palette and the strength of the line, the diversity of genres he uses, the wealth of interpretation and the emotional power which astonishes us. Today's artists have two icebergs to avoid: the paralyzing repetition of a successful idea and the driving innovative craze at whatever cost: exhibition after exhibition Chepik proves that he can constantly renew himself, and remain faithful to his best. Once more, in this 1998 exhibition, he has portrayed himself in a new version of the Ship of Happiness. Aboard his boat which once floated above the spires and cupolas of St. Petersburg and is now slowly gliding above the roofs of Paris, the artist has taken a world which the viewer is familiar with: Pushkin the poet and Petrushka the puppet Pierrot and Columbina, the mother and the muse, the prisoner of the Gulag and the fanatical revolutionary, a real picture book, a personal mythology, all of which compose the inexhaustible and original sources of his creativity. But this time, together with his beloved Russian rowan tree, the artist has embarked some bright sunflowers which could only be painted in the country where Chepik, like Vincent Van Gogh found light and colour. (Marie-Aude Albert)
(c) Chepik 2000