For 20 years, Sergei Chepik—a Russian artist who obtained French citizenship in 1993—was hailed by the English press as “a searing visionary” and “one of the greatest living Russian painters.” Represented in important British, Russian, French, Japanese and American collections, this “unclassifiable” artist painted the portraits of Rudolf Nureyev and Margaret Thatcher, and created a set of four monumental canvases for London’s St Paul’s Cathedral entitled The Way, The Truth, The Life, inaugurated in January 2005. He worked in Paris and exhibited in London from 1988 until his premature death on November 18, 2011.
Born in Kiev in 1953 to an artist-painter father and sculptress mother, Chepik took up painting at the age of five. Admitted to Leningrad’s Ilya Repin Institute (the prestigious St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts before the Revolution), he graduated with flying colours in 1978 and immediately embarked upon his early works, travelling across the Russian heartland and perfecting his art in the class of Academy member Andrei Mylnikov, himself a pupil of Igor Grabar, one of the theoreticians of the World of Art Movement led by Sergei Diaghilev and Alexandre Benois.
From his long years of training with such open-minded, demanding masters, Chepik always maintained an obsession for professionalism, a taste for excellence and a respect for the artistic heritage of centuries past.
The House of the Dead (1979-1987), his masterpiece, which was banned from being shown in the Soviet Union, not only prompted his voluntary exile to France in 1988, but also won the Grand Prix at the Salon d’Automne the same year. The following year, his work The Tree (1982-1984) was awarded the Monaco City Award.
In 1990, Chepik’s first retrospective in London at the Roy Miles Gallery, which consisted of over a hundred works, was an unprecedented success. The Daily Telegraph ran the headline “An unknown Russian genius comes to light” and Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister at the time, invited him to the Houses of Parliament.
From then on, Chepik exhibited each year in London, first at the Roy Miles Gallery in Mayfair, and then from 1997 at the Catto Gallery in Hampstead. He presented a retrospective in Paris at the Espace Pierre Cardin in 2004 and in Milan where the French Cultural Centre held a large show of religious paintings, a version of which was mounted once more at the church in Auvers-sur-Oise as part of the 2010 Franco-Russia Year.
An exceptionally gifted drawer, well-versed in all techniques from watercolour and etchings to oils, ceramic and sculpture, he also mastered all genres, from portraiture in which he excelled to composition which he favoured above all others. He loved to pit himself against the great masters he admired rather than giving in to the easy temptation of tabula rasa, to go against the tide of official art in the Soviet Union and, after moving to Paris, of so-called “contemporary”, relativistic and nihilistic art in the West. All his life, Chepik was a free spirit who resisted dogmas and fashions, remained faithful to his artistic creed, and chose to paint both here and there “in season and out of season.”
His themes may have been extremely diverse, but they formed a distinctive and immediately recognisable world. There are the vast historiosophic compositions on Russia in which Chepik never ceased from one painting to the next to ponder over the tragic destiny of his homeland. There are above all the monumental religious paintings, which held a special place for the Orthodox Christian artist that he was.
There are also the teeming, phantasmagorical compositions in which his imagination bursts forth unbridled. But there are also themes that had their origins in his daily life in Montmartre and the numerous trips he made in France and Europe—Paris and the chimeras of Notre-Dame; Venice and its carnival; Arles and its bullfights, which he enthusiastically attended from 1994 onwards; sunflowers in homage to Van Gogh; and finally the world of the performing arts that fascinated him all his life—circuses and acrobats, boxing rings, cabarets and the wings of the Moulin Rouge.
It is this extraordinary world, which is both so personal and so universal, that this first posthumous retrospective enables visitors to discover or rediscover. It is organised by the Catto Gallery in the vast halls of the Mall Galleries so close to the National Gallery, where the artist never failed to go each time he was in London. For, let’s note once more that he deliberately followed in the grand tradition of Western art while at the same time making his own contribution, which he knew, without either misplaced vanity nor false modesty, to be original and important.
Naturally, certain major works are missing – The House of the Dead (1979-87), the Portrait of Baroness Margaret Thatcher (1993) and of course, his masterpiece The Way, The Truth, The Life (2002-04), whose tragic removal from the walls of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in 2008 broke the heart and spirit of the artist. But, thanks to the generosity of his collectors and English, French and Russian friends, the bulk of his output is there, reuniting all the themes so characteristic of Chepik.
How far he came, visitors will say to themselves, from his first childhood drawings executed in Kiev to the final compositions of 2011 like Quo Vadis Domine in which the announcement of his death can be clearly read. For Chepik knew his end was nigh when, physically and morally exhausted, he inaugurated his final exhibition at the Catto Gallery on November 9, 2011 (a show that presented an overview of his work and acted as a legacy). This is demonstrated by the new monograph, Ultima Opera, the artist’s last works (2008–2011) presented to the public on the occasion of this retrospective.
Chepik was a deeply Christian artist. Just like the good servant of the Gospels, he knew how to exploit the exceptional talents he received at birth to the best of his ability and also knew that after his death (which was both premature and in keeping with a destiny he foresaw from an early age) he would leave behind a body of work that was unquestionably finished, successfully completed and brought to a close.
“Manuscripts don’t burn,” Chepik liked to say, quoting Mikhail Bulgakov, his favourite writer and model, almost his double, who all his life with courage, willpower and passion had forged an immense body of work that is both deeply personal and universal, in season and out of season with the predominant ideology.
Chepik was luckier than his illustrious model, for he was able to exhibit his work during his lifetime, whereas Bulgakov’s masterpieces on the whole remained secret, locked away in his nonconformist, persecuted writer’s table.
“Manuscripts don’t burn… and neither do paintings!” The Sergei Chepik Charity Trust, created on the occasion of this retrospective, has the sole objective of championing the artist’s memory and serving his magnificent, inspired work through the organisation of other exhibitions and the publication of works dedicated to Chepik’s art and extremely charismatic personality.
Like many of his Russian compatriots, Chepik was sensitive to certain signs. The order of the prefect making this endowment fund official is dated August 1, 2013—a quarter of a century to the day after Chepik chose freedom, just like his compatriot Nureyev before him, by settling in Paris on August 1, 1988.
After a first life in Russia, a second between London and Paris, let’s make a vow that Chepik will henceforth enjoy a third life that will, through this foundation, carry his powerful, generous art to the four corners of the world.
Marie-Aude Albert-Chepik
Paris, November 18, 2013
On the second anniversary of Sergei Chepik’s calling into God’s presence.
