A CARICATURIST BECOMES A PAINTER
One of the best caricaturists and the main artist of our magazine, Vladimir
Mochalov, has put on an exhibition of his paintings. As he himself JM jA
admitted, painting was the Wgm most hateful subject for him v.-.;.: m. JHtaMMp'.
in the art school and at college. Bt_ m ~~* B Bk But nearly 40 years later on,
taking a brush and a spatel in his hands, he fell in love with painting. Having
drawn the caricatures of over 20,000 people during thirty years of his work,
Mochalov found inspiration in painting and became fully engrossed in it. In
spring of this year he made "a portrait revolution" by staging an exhibition of
portraits of 150 famous persons of the present and the past. An exhibition of
his works, including still-lifes, landscapes and the portraits of famous art
workers, recently opened at a branch of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. It has
become clear that Mochalov is a great artist.
All pictures have been painted by paste. Mochalov does not spare paints and
actively uses bright colours. He does all this in his own way. One can see the
influence of Saryan and van Gogh in his still-lifes and of Shishkin or Kuindzhy
in his landscapes.But all this is quite modern. The views of Venice displayed at
the exhibition can be taken for the paintings of, say, the 19th-century Russian
painter Vereschagin.
A member of the Academy of Arts, who visited the exhibition for the first time,
came up to Vladimir Mochalov and, hinting at his cooperation with news media,
said: "Drop this trifling matter, you are a great painter". Another member,
pointing at the picture of sunflowers, asked enthusiastically: "How did you
paint it?"
"I painted it with my finger," Mochalov replied honestly.