A Master at Work

Sergei Andriaka's remarkable watercolors are all part of his mission as an artist.


By Margaret Henry


From a studio high above Tverskaya Ulitsa Sergei Andriaka plots a revolution, one brush stroke at a time.


With every still life, portrait or scene of old Moscow he paints, Andriaka hopes to give watercolors a more esteemed place in the Russian artistic landscape.


"Watercolors are usually dismissed as mere graphics," Andriaka said. "But in fact watercolors offer possibilities that oils do not, particularly in the area of coloration."


Art lovers will have a chance to view those possibilities beginning Saturday at the Tretyakov, where 50 or so of Andriaka's most recent works will be on display. That exhibit will be followed by a showing of several hundred works from late March through autumn at Poklonnaya Gora.


The son of an artist, Andriaka began a love affair with color in childhood.


"My father focused my attention on what was beautiful," the artist, 39, recalled. "But he did not explain why these things were beautiful. He wanted me to discover this for myself."


From these beginnings, Andriaka would later form his mission as an artist: "To see the extraordinary in the ordinary, to sense the living spirit in the world around us and to reveal its beauty." Even in such unlikely places as a swamp.


"The swamp has a primitive, untouched beauty," the tall bearded artist said between slow puffs on his pipe. "Bewitching, mysterious, fantastic." Indeed, one of Andriaka's most arresting landscapes shows the aftermath of a spring thaw. A certain small, swampy lake in the Moscow region holds a particular allure; Andriaka has painted it no less than seven times.


While he has worked in oil and tempera and even taught oil painting, Andriaka's enduring interest has been the classical watercolor, painted in layers on dry paper. With this painstaking process, Andriaka is able to achieve remarkable luminosity, texture and gradation of color. In "Still Life With Sewing Machine" (1992), for example, a golden lining glows from underneath brocade that is palpable. The crystal perfume bottle, silver hand mirror, lace handkerchief and emerald-colored velvet in "Box with Green Velvet" (1993) are given such depth and definition that the painting is sometimes mistaken for an oil.


Flowers have been a consistent subject over the years. Andriaka is known for his lilacs, among the most difficult flowers to capture with a paintbrush. His perspective is close to the boughs, and the interplay of light and shadow on the myriad petals is so lifelike that the viewer can almost smell their fragrance.


The Russian countryside is perhaps Andriaka's most eloquent muse: "Russian nature is my mother, close to my heart." Cloaked in white snow and blue shadows, a winter forest seems to have fallen under a spell. A village house becomes a poetic vision by moonlight. Under a broad, sunny sky gently rolling fields stretch toward a horizon dotted by cupolas. While Andriaka paints with great feeling, his works are not afflicted with the bleary sentimentality frequently found in watercolors.


Andriaka's themes are not new, but they are painted from a fresh perspective. The perspective is often actually a retrospective, for it is in hindsight that the painter finds the focus for his landscapes. Nature changes too quickly for an artist on the scene to capture, Andriaka maintains. As he recalls a scene, the most vibrant images remain, he said, while extraneous elements that would not strengthen the image are eliminated.


The least successful of Andriaka's works depict scenes abroad. Though technically well executed, they lack the heart, the profound sense of place of his Russian paintings, which frequently take the viewer along the lanes of old Moscow, past candlelit manor houses, churchyards in winter, and squares at midday.


Drawn by the harmonious proportions of Russian church and secular architecture, Andriaka spent much of his youth sketching these pre-Revolutionary structures, with colors noted in pencil. He would later render these places in watercolors, in various seasons of the year. Its cupolas dim against a brooding sky, Novodevichy Convent is particularly striking in an early autumn portrayal. Gray lilac mist appears to float in a haunting vision of the Iosifo-Volokolamsky monastery.


Andriaka's atmospheric portrayals of old Moscow have made him a favorite with Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who has hung one of the artist's 6 1/2- meter wide panoramas of the pre-Revolutionary city in his office.


Luzhkov is also supporting Andriaka's efforts to spotlight watercolors as a genre. Andriaka is to head a new school of watercolor, funded by the city and now under construction at 17 Gorokhovsky Pereulok. Scheduled to open in September, the 4,000-square-meter school will house classrooms, studios and exhibition space. Classes will be offered at various levels for schoolchildren as well as adults.


Meanwhile, Andriaka's watercolors have met with growing commercial success, sparked by a large 1994 exhibit of his works at the Manezh. While some paintings are bought by foreigners as a remembrance of Russia, many are purchased by well-heeled New Russians nostalgic for the pre-Revolutionary past or anxious to give their wives bouquets that never wither. Then, too, there was the Englishman from Seoul who needed a painting of red roses exactly 1 1/2 meters long and a half meter wide.


Andriaka says he seldom accepts commissions for portraits, because subjects usually want an idealized representation rather than a searching portrayal. Andriaka's portraits, therefore, tend to be of family members or friends who give him a free hand. The disillusionment of old age is captured in a portrait of a woman veteran, while in a painting titled "In the Summer" (1989), a young woman seems to dream of all her tomorrows.


Sergei Andriaka's works will be on display in an exhibit called "The Magic of Watercolors" at the Engineer Wing, Old Tretyakov Gallery, 12 Lavrushinsky Pereulok, second floor in the Green Hall, from Feb. 28 to April 5. Metro: Tretyakovskaya. The exact dates of the Poklonnaya Gora exhibit have not been set.