ORELART PARIS Art Contemporain Russe et International

“In the seaport women try to touch a sailor who has just come back from the sea: it brings happiness”.
Old superstition.

Georgy Gurianov has been a key character of the artistic life of Saint Petersburg for the last twenty years: member of the band “New artists”, drummer of the band “Kino”, singer of the group “Popmechanics” of Sergey Kourekhine, main squatter of Petersburg, organizer of first rave parties, professor of the New Academy. His interests vary from music and cinema to architecture, painting and photography. The strict principles flank all the work of Gurianov and his life style.

Gurianov starts his artistic career in the early 1980 as a member of the young group, cheerful and wild, “New Artists”. Later he becomes an irreplaceable drummer of the band “Kino”. He never stops painting. He is an active member of the legendary Mayakovsky’s friends club, non official group of young artists, poets, musicians, art critics, collectors and trandy people. As the band “Kino” stops its activities, Georgy Gurianov devotes himself to the figurative arts. He chairs the painting department in the New Academy of Fine Arts founded by Timour Novikov, and becomes the main character of Petersburg neo-academisme. The central theme of Gurianov work is a panegyric to the virility and strength that the architecture, the sport, the work, the army and the navy express the best way. The image that goes through his work is the one of a handsome athletic man, sailor, worker, aviator or sportsman. The style of his paintings is influenced by the classicisme, the tradition of the best representatives of the Soviet painting (Deineka, Samokhvalov, Jilinsky) and the lightness of the Petersburg neo-academisme.

Being perfectionist, Gurianov spends a couple years on some of his paintings. Some of his works presented at the Moscow exhibition were started in the early 1990. A few of them are considered by the artist as not to be finished.

The work of Gurianov represents a double aspect. On one hand, it is a painting, a graphic art and a touched up photography. The artist has been fascinated with the last one lately. Isolated in his studio, Georgy works at a few large paintings at the same time. He is so absorbed in his work, that you can always say if he is satisfied or not. He may spend a couple years on one painting, getting new resonance, falling in love with his characters, lost in a day dream. The state of the painting surface and his own physical and moral condition become the same thing to him. The only way to buy or to get a painting by Gurianov for the exhibition is to snatch it of his hands. Some smart collectors managed to take hold of his drawings or sketches that they consider as good as the paintings which the artist never finds finished.