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RE-flower
34 (Green Stripe)
During a summer in the period 1994-97, when we were back from New York City, I
sold a large number of boxes of art books to an antiquarian bookstore. They had
been stored along with all our belongings while we lived in the USA. Only very
few books did I keep … and one of them was titled “Art of the
Avant-Garde in Russia” with the subtitle “Selections from the George
Costakis Collection.”
The book had served as a catalogue for an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum
in 1981, and George Costakis was a Greek-Russian art collector.
Shortly after World War II, he accidentally came across three paintings by Olga
Rozanova in Moscow. Artworks that had been hidden away for decades under
Stalin.
About the encounter with these paintings, George Costakis stated: “…
were signals to me. I did not care what it was… but nobody knew what anything
was in those days.”
Similarly, I had an experience more than 30 years ago when I came across the
book, and for the first time saw a reproduction of Olga Rozanova’s painting
titled “Green Stripe.” The painting is from 1917, and the motif is
abstract: a green vertical stripe centered on a very light, almost white,
background.
In the years since I first saw it, I have used the image in different ways …
without going into further detail here about how and why … only adding that
the image in the book and thus the painting has made it easier for me to be
myself.
The current series has its starting point in my awareness of Olga Rozanova’s
painting … and all that the painting connotes for me:
1917
The October Revolution
abstract pioneer
Lenin
Stalin and the Gulag
ups and downs
hope, hope, hope,
… all the way to present-day Russia with its suppressed, its hidden … and
Vladimir Putin.
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