RusART: Galleries: AUTOGRAPH

In case of the Gallery Authograf I would parenthesise it for it does not exist as a real exhibition or an institution Nevertheless, there is a number of works and unique experience of informal communication with artists, which has been acquired for decades The word experience, although does not seem to be the proper one to express the whole bulk and complexity of relationship, likes and dislikes, comic a id tragic, anecdotes and legends, all in all, everything that has been piled up for the years spent among artists, when their grieves and joys became mine, and their life became my life

Now when artists look for new sources of inspiration, new artistic challenge and try to revise what has become already fixed in our fast and suddenly changing life, I am grateful to my destiny to find myself close to them and take part in their life and work.

Striving to keep and, so to say, stop some moments of this life and this relationship in which the main thing is the atmosphere of communication and spir if of creativeness that stands behind the so called great art and great works, was the right impulse to found the Gallery Autograf

Why Autograf (i. e. autograph)? A dictionary gives the following definitions a)something written or made with one's own hand, b) an or or iginal manuscript or work of art

Yet when I give a painter a canvas of a certain size framed in a stretcher and ask him to make a picture for me as a keepsake, it is, probably, an artistic autograph as well, besides, it is called Autograf, because apart from “finished works” there are sketches, drafts, strokes of pen and brush On the one hand, a fixed size (30 sm ) seems to limit artist's creative activity, but on the on the hand, it brings an element of a game and naturalness that often leads to interesting results A small size of pictures has its practical advantages, such as convenience of keeping and transporting them Furthermore, it allows collecting a huge number of works belonging to various artists who follow different trends, and presenting them in one particular place The clash of miscellaneous individual styles in a small exhibition room, literally on the one wall, brings to life a special tension that.

But the principal virtue of the gallery Autograf is the way people treat one another, informally and without monetary concern, it looks like going back to the old good times and relations when there was always enough time for friendship and imagination The interest and enthusiasm that artists show to take part in organization of the gallery easily prove it

The first artist to join this game was a remarkable painter from Ekaterinburg G Metelev As a matter of fact, it was he whom the whole thing began with…

One December night in 1993, after lots of conversations had been held, he came to us, by bike as usual, with a sack behind his back, his moustaches and beard covered with frost like those of Santa Claus Then he opened the sack and put out three nice. pictures as big as 13x27 sm , and a dozen of stretched canvases of the same size The same night, unable to bear the view of an empty canvas, Misha Brusilovsky began to paint a small picture. The next day Svetlana Tarasova called in The foundation was laid

By this day the collection possesses about 700 paintings and graphic works Among them there are beautiful sketches and "great paintings of a small size* There are famous artists from Ekaterinburg, Ufa, Moscow, St -Petersburg, as well as those yet little known, whose works are represented here All of them, this or that way, I happened to come across in my life Thus, using a chance, I would like to thank truly all these people for the |oy of meeting them, their talent and generosity,(or their participation in the foundation of the Gallery Autograf