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(E-E) Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: art >>
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov • Angels of the Russian Field, 1994
Introduction
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
A male angel with a beautiful, harmonious face gazes intently at us. His face and chest are underlaid with translucent red ink, which makes his ethereal appearance glow. His slightly crossed eyes hypnotise , while at the same time looking straight through the viewer. The rounded surfaces of the collarbones, depicted as dark spots placed asymmetrically next to the sternum, reinforce the unsettling effect of the pupils. The upper edge of the picture is bordered by the angel’s helmet, which is adorned with plume-like garlands and bands of trelliswork. Other pierced ornaments and textured elements complement and surround the bust-length portrait. The composition does not display the typical attributes of an angel – wings – but its nature is revealed by the context: it is sheet 2 >> of the twelve-part series on paper from 1994, Angels of the Russian Field, entitled Dreaming of an Angel in the Russian Field. The title leaves unclear who is dreaming this dream. One might assume that its creator (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, born in Leningrad in 1955, is referring to himself, but then it would be called I Dreamed of an Angel in the Russian Field. The ambiguity arises from the original Russian title: Приснился Ангел в Русском Поле (Prisnilsia Angel v Russkom Pole), literally “Dreamt of (an/the) Angel in the Russian Field”, does not require a subject. Although the “I” may be implicitly understood, the sentence can refer to anyone else, and so the title is perfect for negating an obvious message. Integrating such peculiar features into the title and, most importantly, into the composition itself – the red colour of the skin, the slightly crossed eyes, the trelliswork – characterises Kozlov's imagery, allowing for a multitude of interpretations, some of which are proposed in the following description.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov in the entrance hall to his studio "The Russian Field", Leningrad, 1990.
Angels appear in all stylistic periods of Kozlov's predominantly figurative work, but he first used the title of the series, Angels of the Russian Field, for a painting from 1990 depicting three female angels. The artist was inspired by two stucco ornaments in the entrance area of the building that, from 1989 to 1991, housed his Leningrad studio The Russian Field; the poetic name is a reminiscence of the vastness of the Russian landscape. The stucco ornaments were replicas of Bertel Thorvaldsen's famous classicist allegories Day and Night, two circular reliefs from 1815 representing angels carrying children.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
Kozlov complemented the pair with a central angel in the pin-up style of the 1950s, who majestically accompanies the scene. The three angels may be described as genii, or more precisely genii locorum, the protective spirits of his studio The Russian Field.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov‘s Studio Русскоее Полее • The Russian Field
In 1994, after moving to Berlin, Kozlov took up the title Angels of the Russian Field again and created a series consisting of twelve different themes. It is no longer possible to establish the succession of their genesis, but they were subsequently numbered for archival purposes. This time, the title does not refer to a specific place; the artist opened his Berlin studio, which he once again called The Russian Field, a short time later more >> • more >>. Perhaps in this case one can speak of a mental space that has a special force-field.
Hannelore Fobo and (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
Kozlov drew each motif with quick pencil strokes on the back of a sheet of paper, simultaneously transferring it mirror-inverted to the front. To do this, he coated a glass plate with black oil paint and placed it beneath the paper. The paper absorbed the paint beneath the strokes, giving the front side of the drawing a pastose, less determinate appearance, as if displaying scenes from a dream that have been saved from oblivion. The next section examines in detail this aspect of the monotype technique.
The artist then reworked the front side with various materials: wax crayon, gold bronze, acrylic, car paint, coloured pencils and ink. The sheets display them in different combinations. Sheet 5 >> and sheet 6 >>, for example, have remained largely monochrome: only sparse accents, primarily in silver-coloured car paint and gold bronze, intensify the movement and plasticity of the motifs. By comparison, sheet 10 >> shows bright, partly intertwined colour elements standing out against a black background – green, light blue, red, yellow, orange, gold, silver, white, brown. Figures, vegetation, and other objects are easily identified only in the drawing on the reverse. On the front, where Kozlov reapplied them with paint and added bright dots with his finger, these elements form a colour pattern that leads into pure painting. In this way, the artist lets the painting emerge from the drawing. Taken by itself, this is not unusual in art. However, in a typical painting, the preliminary sketch remains hidden beneath the layers of paint. Here, it has been preserved in its original form on the reverse side, allowing the viewer to compare for each motif the original graphic form with its painterly execution.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
Lyrical titles reflect the content and spirit of these figurative-abstract compositions, especially The Heart’s Evening is Without Beginning – The Heart’s Morning is Without End (sheet 8 >>). This sheet shows a central female figure whose face and posture express desire and, like many other figures from the series, has no wings. Wings are actually present in only a few illustrations, primarily on sheet 1 >> and sheet 10 >>, both of which bear the title of the series, Angels of the Russian Field. On sheet 1, they billow like sails in the wind far above the figures’ heads, while on sheet 10, they open up like calyxes, and the angels sink headfirst to the ground like shed blossoms. Considering that Angels of the Russian Field is nevertheless the title of the entire series, we may conclude that the artist was not interested in applying wings to strictly separate the heavenly realm from the earthly world. This is the case with classical painting, where angels communicate with humans as messengers of the gods, for example in the Annunciation motif. Instead, Kozlov’s images suggest that his angels manifest themselves not only with the help of celestial attributes, but also through fundamental human feelings – emotions and affects that humans cannot control by will, since they are directed by spiritual forces in one direction or another. We know this principle from Greek mythology, where three goddesses vie for Paris’ favour. Paris’ choice is Aphrodite, who promises him the most beautiful of women – Helen – and thus triggers the Trojan War.
Erotic desire is a recurring theme in this series. It can be found in sheet 9 >>, the daydream of a love scene titled You Cannot Command Your Heart: in the upper half of the picture, a woman gazes longingly into the distance, while below her we see a couple in an intimate embrace. As with some others among the twelve compositions, Kozlov drew inspiration from his cycle The Book for Princes, Princesses and People (1991–2007). Published in 1987 as Ansichten vom Körper (Views of the Body), an anthology of nude photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he lavishly overpainted its 208 pages with lacquer paint markers and wrote its new title on the front endpapers mehr >>. Often, the anthology presents several illustrations on the same page; Kozlov combined these into a single new narrative, as he did with You Cannot Command Your Heart, the composition giving rise to sheet 9 >>. He also selected the title for sheet 9 – the Russian title, Сердцу Не Прикажешь (serdtsu ne prikazhesh’) – from the overpainted page of The Book for Princes, Princesses and People, in which he inserted ornamental cursive script as part of the composition. On sheet 9, he wrote it in pencil below the drawing on the back, as he did with all other titles. Desire is equally the theme of sheet 7 >>, in which a female figure addresses her companion: If You Wish, Darling, It’s All Yours. A variation of this scene appears also on sheet 5 >>, Listen, Darling, It’s All Yours: the person addressed in this way, an iron warrior with a skull, could be from a fantasy film. The woman and the warrior reappear two years later in a large-format painting from the cycle Virtuoso Reality (1996), in a park landscape and supplemented by a statue of an athlete; this painting is entitled What is Forbidden – is Allowed more >>.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
The Russian Field (sheet 3 >>) is again dedicated to the theme of mutual attraction. It shows a couple in the pose of antique statues against the backdrop of a birch forest. sheet 4 >> (untitled) interprets this motif as an abstract painting. The counterpart to love is conflict: Peace and War (sheet 6 >>) depicts athletes doing sporting activities. The top is marked by the letters М И Р, mir/peace, the bottom by the letters В О Й Н А, voina/war. The composition is once more a reinterpretation of two photographs from The Book for Princes, Princesses and People. It has also been included in the Virtuoso Reality cycle, combined with the original motif from sheet 1 >> to create a diptych, accordingly entitled War and Peace/Peace and War.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
The subject of Snowflake with a Human Face (sheet 11 >>) is surreal: three figures wearing head masks overlap and penetrate each other in the middle of their bodies. A skyscraper standing next to them illustrates their dimensions. In Angels of Heaven (sheet 12 >>), four delicate female beings move gracefully through airy realms. Unlike in The Book for Princes, Princesses and People, their voluminous petal-like speech bubbles remain empty, and we may complete them ourselves. While the majority of the motifs invite contemplation, the angel of sheet 2 >> , the subject of a dream described earlier (Dreaming of an Angel in the Russian Field), communicates directly with the viewer, as if calling for an answer. This portrait thus occupies a special position in the series. A year after the series Angels of the Russian Field, E-E Kozlov returned to the theme of angels and created the cycle Miniatures in Paradise – sixteen paintings on flag fabric measuring 5 x 2 m each, hoisted on flagpoles in June 1995 around the Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
For these Miniatures, which he intended should have a long-distance effect, he designed stencils with motifs that predominantly refer to the place for which they were made.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov und Hannelore Fobo
In creating the Miniatures, Kozlov further developed his constructivist figures from the late 1980s, lending their basic geometric forms a new momentum through asymmetries and superimpositions. And although the Miniatures differ completely from the Angels of the Russian Field in terms of size, technique, style and motif, they have – apart from the general subject – something in common. For Miniature No. 6, the artist once again chose the title You Cannot Command Your Heart, this time for a host of angels grouped around a central angel.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
Ongoing reinterpretations of concepts, styles and motifs are characteristic of Kozlov's artistic practice. In this way, he has, over the years, created his own cosmogonic myths – also the title of a drawing from 1991. The same year, in a conversation about the “art of the future”, he spoke of the “inner richness of desires” and its counterpart, the “inner desire for richness” more >>. Together, these impulses allow him to constantly devise and re-devise new forms and figures, suggesting a natural interaction with the creative forces.
Some notes on technique In (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov's artistic language, the painterly element – shaping the composition using only colour – and the linear element – fashioning the form by means of contours or lines – are of equal value. In 2012, he commented on this as follows:
Painting is finite, drawing is infinite more >>. Painterly and graphic structures appear in his work on their own or in combination with each other. With its double-sided design, the twelve-part series on paper Angels of the Russian Field shows the spectrum of possibilities. Whether one considers the drawing as the reverse or as the front of the sheet is actually not predetermined. Convention suggests that the final stage – the painting – should be referred to as the front. The original drawing thus becomes the reverse side. The artist starts by transferring the original motif from the back to the front employing the monotype technique: he coats a glass plate with paint, places a sheet of paper on top, and begins drawing. Since the paper is somewhat larger than the glass plate, its edges form a natural white frame. To select the paint for the coating, it is important to consider its consistency – on the one hand, the paint must not run so that the drawing is preserved on the front side, and on the other hand, it must be sufficiently elastic so that the paper can be easily detached from the glass plate. Oil paint, in this case black oil paint, suits the purpose.
The pressure of the pencil (or crayon) causes the oil paint to reproduce the motif on the opposite, that is, front side of the sheet, but not exactly one-to-one. Moving the pencil across the paper slightly pushes aside the oil paint beneath it, and as a result, the lines on that side of the paper become wider – they now consist of a lighter centre line with darker, soft edges on either side. This is similar to the principle of drypoint etching, in which drawing a steel needle across the copper plate produces a ridge (“seam”) along the incision. The artist also takes into account that the image on the front mirrors the original drawing; therefore he inverts letters and numbers in the drawings. Plane black areas on the front, unless they have been created by overpainting, either result from closely spaced pencil strokes on the reverse or, as on sheet 5 for example, from pressing on the reverse with a soft object or a finger. In the latter case, the artist can only roughly estimate how these areas will spread on the front side, because this kind of pressing leaves no traces on the reverse. Here another important factor comes into play: the monotype technique interacts with the artist, and the mirrored image on the front is generated in a controlled-uncontrolled manner. As soon he finishes the drawing, Kozlov removes the sheet from the glass and turns it over to continue the composition on the front. Because oil paint does not dry immediately, he can now use the blunt end of a brush to draw individual lines and hatchings into the paint, thus contouring the soft blackness again (sheet 9 >>). In fact, the pastose paint adheres to the paper not only at the print marks, but to a lesser extent to the entire sheet. Fine parallel lines running through the paper indicate the direction in which the sheets were detached from the glass – typically from the shorter side. This dense network of black lines and, in places, dots generates a kind of “background noise”. It confers volume on the images and contributes to their extraordinary vibrancy. After a sheet has been taken off the glass plate, there is usually enough black paint left on the plate for another print. It is difficult to determine how many of the twelve sheets are actually second prints, since the new drawing superimposes any preceding motif. Yet the fact that the fine parallel lines overlap on some of the sheets could be an indication of such “multiple use”. In one case, however, it is possible to speak with certainty of a second print from the same plate, namely in the case of sheet 4 >>. It is the only one without a drawing on the reverse because it was printed directly from the glass plate of sheet 3 >> before it was elaborately painted over – the very elements that were not painted over reveal their provenance. For example, the circular symbol at the upper edge of sheet 4 encloses a figure drawn by a two-wheeled vehicle (also present on sheet 8 >>); when compared with the one from sheet 3, however, black and white are inverted. In other words, white areas on sheet 3 appear black on sheet 4, and in this blackness, the once black lines now form white spaces.
The inversion results from the technique of the monotype, where a second print from the plate necessarily forms a negative image of the first print. The second print absorbs the paint that was not needed for the first print, and vice versa: what has previously been absorbed now leaves voids. Kozlov made use of the principle of negative printing as early as 1980, when he regularly produced first and second monotype prints from glass plates.
The artist continued the composition on the front with coloured elements, which have been described in the introduction. White, when mixed with black, creates different shades of grey suggesting light and shadow effects (sheet 9 >>). Additionally, black areas can be made transparent using opaque white varnish or oil paint. Coloured borders frame the images, separating the motifs from the white edges of the paper. Below the image, sometimes as part of the frame, is the artist’s signature E. Kozlov – 94. It occurs a second time on the reverse, together with the respective title of the sheet. He later added, also on the reverse, his signature E-E, which he has been using exclusively since 2005. Finally, Kozlov emphasised the frames with small, light brown “smoke dots”, mainly at the corners – scorch marks caused by the short, precise placement of a burning match. These decorative ornaments set delicate highlights and bring the composition to a close. Hannelore Fobo, August 2025 |
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Published 4 October 2025 |
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home // E-E // biographie // art // eros // Leningrad 80s // Valentin Kozlov // 2 x 3m // events // sitemap // kontakt /
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