"Angel" by Gennady Ustyugov. (Large jpg - 44K)
A schizophrenic insomniac who shocked the Soviet establishment with his work is having his paintings shown in the city.
Well known St Petersburg artist Gennady Ustyugov, 58, had mysteriously failed to show up at the opening of his "Spring" exhibition held in the unusual surroundings of the restaurant Staraya Derevnya - a popular haunt among the city's cultural circles.
Ustyugov's artistic style descended onto the Soviet art scene in the early 1960's at a time when it was dominated by social realism and stoic art glorifying the state. The effect was shocking.
His slim, pale, etherial creatures with humbly bent heads didn't quite fit in with the state's preferences for hearty looking working girls, with rosy cheeks, armed with hammers, sickles and shovels.
"I was expelled from the Academy of Art's art school and had to work in a plant as a designer. Ten years later I developed schizophrenia," says Mr Ustyugov in his autobiography.
Disaster struck again in 1963, when a medical test on his spine went horribly wrong and left him an insomniac. He claims his medical conditions wrecked his chances of marriage.
His exhibition "Spring" was organized by his fans at the restaurant and includes about 60 paintings from five private collections in St Petersburg.
Loneliness and contemplation are recurrent themes in his pictures, which are accompanied by short verses about the meaning of life. His landscapes, like his life, are devoid of people, his world is mostly sad and uncomfortable.
The artist writes the depressing lines, "My God, this forest is so familiar. It sounds the same, and is still young, yet I am already an old man."
One of the best known works in this exhibition is "Where is the Freedom" (1985) -- a painting in stark, gray colors, which reflects his impressions during his stay in a mental hospital.
In this painting, one sees a long ladder leading upwards through several horizontal layers in various shades of gray. Perhaps they reflect the depressive moods of mental illness and its futility as the ladder finally emerges into nowhere. There is no escape into blue sky, only more hopeless gray.
A stray yacht with lifeless sails is seen defeated and frozen in the sombre emptiness of the sky. "You cannot find freedom on Earth, and you are not able to reach Heaven," writes the artist.
Pale, sometimes transparent, strangely elongated figures have their eyes meditatively closed. But when they are open they are searching, penetrating into the depths of the onlooker's soul.
The dark faces of his characters painted in green, red and gray which are in many of his canvases, are astonishingly mysterious and leave a strong impression.
Nikolai Blagodatov, one of the collectors, explains, "Ustyugov's angels are crying for our sins, his girls are languishing without love and kindness. They suffer, are dying to get freedom. They are dying to get into the yachts but these are useless without the breath of wind. These cannot help. They need man's help.
"But mankind is deaf and blind -- and the artist keeps knocking on the doors to people's souls."
Gennady Ustyugov writes: "Thoughts arrive, thoughts leave, and my soul does not find anything here."
Ustyugov's mother was an book-keeper. His father, formerly a collective farm chairman, died of alcoholism.
His first exhibition took place on a shabby fence near a village barn, which served as his first artistic workshop. Later, most of his early works were burned down when the barn caught fire.
Only since 1989 have his works gained recognition and have been featured in official exhibitions in St Petersburg and other Russian cities. Some of his works have been considered of such national importance that they have been bought by the Russian Museum.