 |
Marat Bekeev - Represented by Galerie Eurasia
( Kazakhstan, 1964 - present )
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Artist: Marat Bekeev ( Kazakhstan, 1964 - present ) -
|
|
|
|
|
|
Main Category: Painting
|
|
|
Genres: Contemporary Asian Art
|
|
|
|
Biography: Marat Bekeev
Born in 1964 in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan.
1979-1983: Art college, Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan
1983-1984: Teacher in Aktyubinsk pedagogical college
1984: Arts designer in City Theatre, Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan
1984-1990: Belarus Theatre and Arts Institute, faculty of oil painting
1990-1994: Aktyubinsk art workshops, painter-artist
1990-: Member of the Union of artists of Kazakhstan
1990-1994: Secretary of Aktyubinsk branch of the Union of artists
1993-1994: Teacher in Aktyubinsk pedagogical institute, faculty of arts
Symposiums and festivals:
1989: International symposium of young painters, House of arts “Senezh”,
Solnechnogorsk, Russia;
1991: Symposium of young painters, Tau-Turgen, Kazakhstan;
2000: International festival, master-class “Silk road”, Almaty, Kazakhstan, special
prize;
2001: International festival of arts “A man and a tulip”, organized by the embassy of
Netherlands, second prize, Almaty, Kazakhstan;
2002: 5-th art laboratory of painters of Turkish speaking countries, Mersin, Turkey;
2002: International arts festival, master-class “Open city”, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
2003: Personal exhibition, Ular Gallery, Almaty, Kazakhstan;
2003: Personal exhibition, Galerie Eurasia, Brussels, Belgium
2004: Group show “Contemporary painting in Kazakhstan”, Galerie Eurasia,
Brussels, Belgium
2004: Group show “Dйcouverte du Kazakhstan”, Galerie du Moulin, Asselborn, Luxembourg
2004: Group show “Contemporary painting in Kazakhstan”, Intourist-Galerie Eurasia, London, UK
2004: Group show “The young painters from Kazakhstan”, Galerie Eurasia, Brussels, Belgium
The following collections have works of Marat Bekeev:
The Kasteev State Museum of Arts, Almaty; Kazakhstan
Museum of Contemporary Arts, Astana, Kazakhstan
Museum “Umai”, Almaty, Kazakhstan
ABN AMRO Bank, Kazakhstan
ATF Bank, Kazakhstan
TuranAlem Bank, Kazakhstan
Kazkommerzbank, Kazakhstan
Alferon Mgt, London, UK
Union of Artists of Belarus
Union of Artists of Russia
Ministry of Culture, Kazakhstan.
And in private collections in Russia, USA, Germany, Finland, Belgium, France, Israel, Switzerland, Austria, South Korea, Greece, Netherlands, Denmark, UK, Bulgaria, Hungary, Canada, Sweden, Pakistan, Italy, Macedonia, Turkey.
|
Exhibition History: Marat Bekeev (Kazakhstan)
Galerie Eurasia, Brussels, October-November 2003
Marat Bekeev (born in 1964) is one of the most outstanding painters among the new wave of post-Soviet artists. He studied painting and sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Minsk in 1984-89. In the Soviet Union, there was a strong emphasis on technical mastery in the education in the visual arts. A painter was assumed to be a skilled artisan, firmly rooted to the tradition of socialist realism, with the mission of giving a visual expression to the aspirations of the socialist society and the daily life of its citizens. As regards the superb mastery of several different tech-niques, Marat Bekeev has indeed lived up to the Soviet ideal of the painter as an artisan and a master of his trade.
The second half of 1980s was a period of drastic re-orientation in the Soviet and Russian art. Before the new freedom of expression brought about by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost, avant-garde art was more or less confined to the underground, accessible only to a very narrow circle of intellectuals in the major cities. In 1980s this all changed: contemporary paint-ing was freed of its marginal status and was able to challenge the old mainstream. The founda-tions of Marat Bekeev’s painting were laid in this atmosphere of iconoclasm and enthusiasm, amidst a general feeling of excitement over the newly acquired powers of self-expression. The ideal was still that of the skilled artisan, but instead of the socialist realism that emphasised continuity, the work was now influenced by Jean Dubuffet, Willem de Kooning, Nicholas de Staël, and Francis Bacon.
This synthesis between traditions developed into a striking versatility in the mature work of Bekeev. The mastery of several techniques deepens this sense of versatility. In this Brussels exhibition, three different sides of his art are portrayed. The first one is the exquisite play with shades of colour in the oil-on-canvas paintings. Second, the powerful and haunting images cre-ated with oil pastels on paper reveal a different aesthetic landscape that is in stark contrast with the warm and harmonic compositions of the oil paintings. The works created with gouache, acrylic paint and water colour on paper concentrate, in turn, on play with a set of basic sym-bols to produce an endless variety of compositions.
Although Bekeev denies any influence of Chagall, there is indeed something Chagallesque in his work. Like Chagall, he fetches a set of basic images from the environment of his childhood as recurring basic elements for his compositions. And like Chagall, he usually denies the sym-bolic value of these basic images, referring to them as mere building blocks that are put to-gether to create a whole that is more than a sum of its parts. Nevertheless, in the same manner as the works of Chagall create a vivid impression of the Jewish Vitebsk of bygone days, the paintings of Bekeev – playing with the images of the falcon, the horseman, the moon, the starry night that embraces the artist – portray the feel of his native steppe town of Aktyubinsk. In a delightful cycle of small oil-on-canvas paintings, he also pays an explicit tribute to the life on the steppe and the childhood images that have evolved into the basic constituents of his art.
Marat Bekeev lives and works currently in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Besides in his native country, his work has been on display in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris and Berlin. Several of his paint-ings are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art of Kazakhstan.
|
|
Collections:
|
|
|
|
|
