Victor Koulbak

Beginnings

As a child he would draw whenever possible, without particular encouragement by his family: his father was an air force pilot, his mother a housewife. One day, however, his mother showed his work to the director of the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Moscow. He was admitted immediately and spent the next four years receiving a classic education, the only requirement being precision. The best drawings were shown in a window that gave onto the street. The first time one of his drawings was shown, he very proudly asked his mother to come with him to see. Someone had broken the window and stolen his drawing. “This was my first artistic success” says Victor Koulbak.^[1]

At school with the Masters

At the end of his secondary school studies and his apprenticeship with the Beaux-arts, Koulbak became aware of a gap in his schooling. He undertook to find a “Master” and stopped looking once he found a well-known artist. From the first day, however, the student argued with his teacher, and left the workshop immediately: the master in question imposed his own style, his own aesthetic principles and personal vision, and brought nothing new from the technical point of view. The young artist then took the most important decision of his life: to discover by himself the principles and techniques of the old masters. At first he was impressed by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, but then he soon turned to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, etc.^[2]

Soviet censorship

Refusing the dictates of official art: “Social Realism”, Koulbak put himself on the side of non-conformist painters, thus depriving him of lucrative orders. So, in order to survive, he was forced to work on illustrations for books and magazines. However, he continued to paint clandestinely, for himself and for a small group of friends, but everything became more and more difficult: art supplies were reserved for members of the Soviet Artists Union, and others had difficulty in procuring these necessities for their work. For example, in summer there would be no green available, in winter no white. To become a member of the Union, you had first to have participated in two official exhibitions.^[3] The selection committees, who protected soviet realism, were exclusively made up of Party members totally faithful to the regime. This regime became slightly more flexible during the 1970s. Exhibitions were organized with debates and held in non-public spaces, such as the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Academy of Sciences, but were only accessible to those holding a laissez-passer issued by the Party and the KGB. Koulbak was able under these conditions to hold two exhibitions, which were, however, closed after only two hours.

Stendhal's Syndrome

In 1975 Koulbak left the USSR. He stayed for six months in Vienna, visiting all the wonderful museums of that city. The contemplation of Brueghel’s paintings put him into a trance, so much so that he was awoken by one of the guards at the closing of the museum. He had been in front of Brueghel’s work from 11.00 in the morning until the closing of the museum in the evening, victim of Stendhal syndrome, described by Stendhal in 1878 in his book Rome, Naples and Florence.^[4]

Sweden, France and Malta

Before leaving the USSR, Koulbak had sent several of his works to Sweden. He was invited by a gallery in Stockholm, and within one year had four exhibitions of his own in Helsingborg, Stockholm, Malmö, Oslo. In 1976 he moved to Paris. Since then 25 personal exhibitions and numerous collective exhibitions have been dedicated to his art in France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Belgium, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany and Malta. Koulbak is a resident of Malta since the year 2000.

Periods

During his "exploratory" period in Moscow from 1965 to 1975, Koulbak experimented with all types, techniques and styles.

• 
  Butterfly (1971).
• 
  Icarus (1972).
• 
  Mechanical Butterfly (1973).
• 
  Celebration (1970).

« Surréalist » Stockholm then Paris, from 1975 to the 1980s

• 
  In Contemplation (1977).
• 
  Metamorphoses (1977).
• 
  Traveller (1977).
• 
  Meditation (1978).

« Thematic » Paris from 1980 to 1990.

• 
  Pilot (1986).
• 
  He did what he could but is still alone (1987).
• 
  Destiny (1983).
• 
  One would say that the father was bad (1985).

During his "Master’s" period in Paris, followed by Malta in the 1990s, Koulbak’s main body of work has been executed in silver point.

• 
  Green Monkey (2004)
• 
  Portrait (2001)
• 
  Nude n°4 (2006)
• 
  Outside still life (1987)

Techniques

Oil, gouache, water colour, dry point, pencil, silver point, etc. Koulbak uses them all in the style of the Masters of the Renaissance, adapting them to his personal aesthetic concept.^[5]

Artictic Vision

"The Renaissance, says Victor Koulbak, represented the art at its summit. The artist, in his representation of man, aspired to the divine. And this could not be done without mastery. Neither before nor after this period did the artist achieve such heights. The history of art of following periods is just a derivation. God was at first replaced by man, and then by the painter himself as the individual placed in all his triviality at the centre of the universe. We have gone from adoration to exhibitionism. How did we get there? Art education as a whole needs to be re-evaluated. We give a brush to a student and tell him “express yourself” but would we ever think to suggest such a thing to a student of the piano? Why should it seem absurd for the piano and not for the arts? No, in order to make a child a real artist, he needs first to learn to distinguish the beautiful from the ugly and to master his tools, to teach him techniques in order to enable him to transform his weaknesses into qualities. And to achieve this, many years of hard and difficult work are required. If it is not done today, the future of our world seems to me to be very dark. By refusing beauty, we refuse civilization. I don’t know if beauty can save the world, but without beauty, the world will not survive."

Connected articles

• Portrait
• Pointe d'argent
• Кульбак Виктор
• Koulbak Victor

Bibliography

• René Huyghe, Les signes du temps et l’Art moderne, Flammarion,1985
• Gérard Xuriguera, Les Figurations, Éditions Mayer,1985
• S.Bazin, P.Nicolas, Koulbak, La jouissance apaisée des formes permanentes, Groupe Bazin, 1998
• Nicolas Bokov, Or d’Automne et Pointe d’Argent. Conversations avec Victor Koulbak, Les éditions Noir sur Blanc

External links

• Official site of Victor Koulbak