Evgeny Savrasov

Evgeny Savrasov was born in the village Bolshaya Dzhalga, located in the Stavropol region. In 1964 he graduated from the Grekov Art School in Rostov.

When Savrasov took on individual painting, he made a quick transition from a realistic style learnt in school to a brighter and more generalized decorative painting style. He claims to have never been interested in copying reality. Instead he was quite fascinated by revealing structural relationships between form and colour, the elements that are the basis for all the phenomena in the world.

In the early 1960s, Savrasov started using industrial enamel paint in his paintings. He applies the paint in thick layers on rough canvas or fiberboard. He creates figurative compositions but organizes them by using simplified primitive shapes and more local colour which is abstracted from nature impressions. He developed his individual style into a heavy yet life-affirming approach. Savrasov’s confidence in his feeling of the shape, dimension and weight of an object encouraged him to take on modeled sculpture in stone and ceramics.

Savrasov’s art was exceptionally radical for Stavropol at that time. His infamy as a local avant-garde artist and innovator who undermined the canons of realistic art was an obstacle to his career. His works were not accepted into exhibitions and articles about his art were banned from publication. Savrasov also faced troubles in another field of his professional career, his teaching work. For a significant portion of his life, Savrasov has taught at the Stavropol Art School. His methods of teaching were very different from the established approaches, through his innovative teaching practices he developed his own course on teaching art design.

Savrasov did not find any support or opportunities for personal development in his native town, so he set off to travel around the country. He remembers how he flew from Stavropol to Moscow, Leningrad and the Baltic countries only to visit an interesting exhibition from abroad. There was a moment when he was determined to move to the Baltic States.

The artist was predestined to live and work in the place where he was born. Today, Savrasov is a living classic, one who hasn’t been fairly acknowledged in his land. He is the creator of interesting painting pieces, objects, and installations. He is one of the progressive teachers within the Russian artistic education system. He continues to create with the stubbornness of someone who is certain about the cause of their life.