Tolmachev, Le désir du dessin
By Ellen Turner Hall
The Ukranian artist Mykola Tolmachev has created a remarkable body of work on display at the Musée Maillol, Banyuls. Le désir du dessin (The desire of drawing) is a retrospective spanning the last 10 years,
from Tolmachev’s work at the Beaux Arts in Paris in 2014 to his watercolours sent from Kiev last year.
Channeling the recent history of his country, Tolmachev transfers onto paper the fragility of existence and the sacrifice of innocence. The drawings are masterful, reminiscent of Durer in their attention to every hair and play of light on the surface. But the delicacy of his brush work often stands in stark contrast to the brutality of his subjects.
One of the most sensual works is a portrait of a young woman, although we see only her hair, neck and lips. A strand of hair wrapped around her fingers, a gesture so simple and banal as to go unnoticed, becomes dramatic when we notice two “fingers” that don’t belong to her.
Melancholy and menace infuse Tolmachev’s art. Thorns rain down on an upturned face, a syringe is aimed at the head of a Renaissance virgin, a severed head is decorated with a heart-shaped wound. Putin is caricatured as a woman with a grey wig piled high in which nestles an airplane.
The message is provocative, suggesting how evil imposes itself and weighs on our lives with a sense that something is rotten, off, threatening. Three portraits of young men, one with a feather in his neck, another with a tail in his mouth and the third with a butterfly perched on his nose (entitled “How long do butterflies live”) pose a question: What kind of future can they look forward to?
During my recent visit the museum, the former house and workshop of the sculptor Aristide Maillol, was full of visitors captivated by Tolmachev’s vision of desire and dread. You will be, too.
The show runs to 17 November 2024. MORE DETAILS:
