Exhibition "Brushstrokes for a Portrait. A. V. Kokorin"

About exhibition

In 1995 a memorial exhibition was opened in the exhibition hall of the Demidov Historical and Local History Museum, featuring the artist's paintings, documents, photographs, and personal belongings. Anatoly Vladimirovich Kokorin did not choose his profession; life chose it for him. Kokorin's talent was formed under the influence of the fine traditions of Russian painting. Everything the artist did during his years of work in art was dedicated to the human being; it was a restrained and poetic account of his lofty spiritual qualities. In his works A. V. Kokorin is laconic, as he was in life. He possessed excellent taste, an ironic mind, and an enduring sense of benevolent humor. The artist had the ability to compose an entire drawing within the rectangle of the sheet, placing everything necessary and leaving no superfluous space. He had a keen sense of color. His palette was varied: it could shine with bright decorativeness or be extremely modest, and, most importantly, it never repeated itself in its color combinations. Each subject, each landscape, each city, and perhaps each country, was seen by the artist in its own unique color scheme. The qualities of draughtsman and colorist merge perfectly in Kokorin's work. By combining them he evoked in the viewer an almost physical sensation of midday heat or morning freshness, of humidity in the air or a gust of dry wind. If one can put it that way, the artist's works breathe easily and freely. Perhaps it is all due to the economy of means, the respect for the blank paper, which the artist made "work", turning it sometimes into the depth of the sky, sometimes into the mass of a stone wall, sometimes into the glow of a naked body in the dimness of the studio.