The Atrium Gallery (3rd floor) is exhibiting the exhibition "Life is like a rose in its prime" in honour of the artist and poet Fiodor Iastreb's 70th birthday.
The international festival of digital art "Terra Nova", the international Biennale of contemporary art "Colorfest", the international exhibition of graphic arts "Art-line", the annual exhibition "Art-krok", "The Flower Paradise" etc. were all organised by the gallerist, educator, and art historian Fiodor Iastreb (1953–2014).
Fiodor Iastreb was a talented poet who participated in numerous national and international art exhibitions and events. He was also the founder and first head of the Library of Belarus' Gallery and Exhibition Department as well as the chairman of the International Guild of Painters and the chairman of the Belarusian Union of Artists, associate professor of the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts.
Bright, distinctive author paintings are on display. The master's experiments made in watercolors introduce him to his early work and artistic handwriting during the period of search, formation of his style and manner. There are also small-format paintings created during the last years of his life that are filled with thoughts, tense, restrained, and emotional. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to look into the artist's studio, feel the atmosphere of work, choice, learning, experiment, reflection, creative fun, longing and search. A significant part of the works has never been exhibited before. The exhibition also features two paintings donated by the author to the library's collection in 2010 titled "Abandoned boats" (2006) and "Meeting with a unicorn" (2005).
Fiodor Iastreb's pictorial and poetic heritage is a palette of semantic shades and philosophical conclusions. The works impress with their metaphorical, poetic, harmonious composition, and coloristic richness. Colorful pictorial narratives, bright watercolor essays, small picturesque sketches-sonnets touch with their mood, imagery, and spontaneity. "The Fisherman's Dream", "The Meeting with a unicorn", "Memory of the house", "The Expectation", "The Wind of Wandering" – the author dreams and remembers, fills the living space with original fantasy, rethinks, lives... The colorful divomir of the artist stands out for its bright individual style, monumentality, decorativeness, it is characterized by the flight and cozy intimacy of compositions, the unpredictability of plastic language and its expressiveness.
In the last years of the artist's life, painting gave up the space of self-expression and self-knowledge to poetry. The word became a means to convey feelings and share thoughts. About a thousand sonnets by Fiodor Iastreb are collected in the collections presented at the exhibition-collections "Promise of dreams", "Rainbow trail", "Life is like a rose in its prime", "stigma", "plea of fire and wind". There are also magazines, materials of scientific conferences, author's art criticism articles and articles about the artist's life, activities and creativity, albums, catalogues of exhibitions and projects. Among them is the catalog "The First International Landscape Festival", which became the winner of the National Award "The Art of Book" (2008) in the category "The Publishing debut". The master often worked on projects based on the collection of the National Library of Belarus.
The title of the exhibition is "Life is like a rose in its prim" – a line from the sonnet of Fiodor Iastreb, which opens the master's collection of poems of the same name. The poem is deep and touching, as if not written, but drawn by images that one after another appear before the reader, like a poetic painting. Two creative hypostases of the author, an energetic, strong, bright soul, a special artistic taste and style, professionalism and benevolence are revealed through paintings, watercolors, and poetry by Fiodor Iastreb. The prematurely plucked rose of his life blooms today as a creative legacy, everything he accomplished.
We invite you to visit the exhibition from February 6 to April 9, 2023.
The end date of the exhibition can be changed.
The opening hours of the exhibition corresponds to the library’s opening hours.
Entrance to the exhibition is available by the library ticket or ticket of the library's social and cultural center.
For more info: (+375 17) 293 29 80.
The article is provided by the Gallery and Exhibition Activity Department.
