Moscow Museum of Modern Art Shows Mukhadin Kishev ~ The Power of Color

Monday, 10 March 2008 22:44

MOSCOW - Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents “The Power of Color” – a personal exhibition of works by Mukhadin Kishev, dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts. The very title of the show gives a clue to the understanding of the master’s unique style. The main character of Kishev’s canvases is the color – powerful, bold, and sometimes astonishing. The artist’s palette is truly unlimited, it contains the whole diversity of nuances and their combinations.

Mukhadin Kishev’s mastery of the color is so free and natural that it seems he can express almost everything with shades, whether images of reality, or a world of fantasy, or any psychic condition. The painter’s career includes a wide variety of styles, from the most realistic motifs to geometrical abstraction. Far and wide the real world intertwines with fantasy and so seems a product of the imagination, an imprint of the author’s heart and soul. All Kishev’s works – naturalistic as well as non-figurative – evoke a great number of associations and a deep emotional impact. However, his favorite genre is abstraction. As the artist puts it, abstraction is “a marvelous art where one can feel the melody of colors singing together, where there should be no superfluous detail, no deception – neither in tone nor in drawing”.

Now the master is at the peak of his creative potential; he considers his main goal to praise beauty in our mad and unpredictable world. In Kishev’s paintings, the eternal humanitarian and aesthetic values are embodied in a contemporary and not in the least archaic way. The artist observes: “My quest is like an endless fantastic road; the longer I walk it, the more interesting things become, and I’d like to go on forever”.

Mukhadin Kishev was born in 1939 in Kabardino-Balkaria. In 1965, he graduated from the Krasnodar State University; meanwhile, he attended the flying courses at the Krasnodar Aircraft Club and received a certificate in piloting sport aircrafts. In 1973, he was elected member of the USSR Union of Artists, and from 1993 was a member of the International Union of Artists.

Mukhadin Kishev began to exhibit his works while still in the university. In the 1960s-1980s he executes several monumental works for resort towns in the South of Russia. From 1963 on, Kishev took part in 70 group exhibitions in Russia and abroad. At the same time, he had 31 personal shows in Nalchik, Moscow, London and the cities of Spain.

From the 1980s, the artist took part in numerous charity exhibitions, among them a personal show in London to help orphan children in Russia (1997), an exhibition of the Gorbachev Fund in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2001), a display of Russian art “Children in Crisis” (London, 2007). In 2006, “Kishev Art Foundation” organized a charity auction to help orphanages in Nalchik.

Mukhadin Kishev was awarded many important prizes in Russia and abroad, including the Order of Malta (Spain, 2001) and three Gold Medals of the contest among members of the European Academy of Arts (2003-2004). In 2001, he was elected member of the European Academy of Arts in Belgium and became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Mukhadin Kishev’s works are conserved in museums of fine arts in Nalchik, Krasnodar and Tobolsk, in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in the Gorbachev Fund (Moscow) and the Kolodzei Art Foundation (New York), in cultural centers of Britain and Spain. More than 270 pieces are in private collections in 34 countries, including the keepings of the Spanish Royal Family.

In Russia and abroad there are numerous books, catalogues and other publications about Mukhadin Kishev’s oeuvre. In Russia and Spain several documentaries about the artist appeared. His exhibitions were visited by Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Felipe and Infanta Elena, President of the Russian Academy of Arts Zurab Tsereteli, astronaut Alexey Leonov and many other famous people.