Visual Arts Library
The Coffin Maker's Workshop
Artist: Boris Sveshnikov
Date:
1961
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 79.5 x 74.7 cm
Event: Soviet Repression
Motif:
Isolation
In 1946, at the age of 19, Boris Sveshnikov was arrested by the Soviet Secret Police and sentenced to eight years in prison and a labor camp. In this 'camp' period he secretly produced hundreds of drawings and dozens of paintings, while working as the camp's night watchman, and many of his works were smuggled out of the camp. Of course, art materials were scarce, and for the rest of his career he would use only thin layers of paint, limited color and standard drawing paper format. Sveshnikov depicted many images from camp life, with evil emerging in different guises, but this is not always apparent. He also was inspired by his earlier life, and the people in his drawings continue to live, love and dream, despite lacking control of their worlds and their fate. Sveshnikov was influenced by the German and Dutch masters and also painted in a Surrealist style, although he had not been formally exposed to the movement. In his 'Moscow' period, the thirty years following his release from the camp in 1954, Svenshikov continued to be influenced, in part, by his camp years, and used a wide range of techniques to express what he saw in his mind's eye. He once said: "All of my ideas spring from the daily routine of my existence. From day to day, I live by observations, reflections, and feelings, and thoughts and visions occur to me which I embody in my pictures...These visions occur spontaneously, at the oddest moments...And then the moment comes when I say to myself: You must start this picture, it has to be painted. And this is when the period of embodying begins. But actually these periods are indivisible, since the art of painting is not just the illustration of what one has seen. You don't see something, and set it down-it just doesn't happen that way. The process of painting is a very difficult process, a very private process."
Credits: Courtesy of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection
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