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Valentin Popov: Art’s ‘Modern Mixmaster’

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Sonoma Valley Sun

Frequent trips to the California coast inspired his seascape paintings… He finds the wave series metaphorical and metaphysical.

By Jackie Lee: Sun Fine Arts

Valentin Popov’s retrospective of 40 in art making continues at Sonoma Valley Musuem of Art through April 5. Visitors to the museum are impressed with the sheer size and photorealism of the portraits and seascapes in the “Modern Mixmaster” exhibition. 

When he was 11, Popov told his father he didn’t want to have anything to do with art, which was a surprise to Popov Senior, who was the Professor of Art at the Academy of Fine Art in Ukraine. Two years later, Popov attended a fine art school, joined a drawing class, and discovered he liked art after all. He had dismissed the idea when the opportunity had presented itself two years previously, so he was not eligible to join the art class in the 8th Grade. His father stepped up and coached him as he applied himself diligently to art studies, then he took the exam with special permission and passed, spending the next four years in art school.

Social Realism was popular at the time. Popov didn’t like it; he became an illustrator instead, with defined interest in printmaking. That was followed by three years of studio work at the Academy. Soon after, he met two Stanford University Professors of Medicine who were visiting Ukraine. Impressed with his work, they invited him to visit them in Stanford.

On his first visit to California, he presented his prints to Djerassi Gallery in San Francisco. The director was impressed with the portfolio and Popov became their first Russian artist to exhibit at the gallery (and the director himself purchased two prints for his own home).

Juggling his burgeoning art career in two countries simultaneously, Popov traveled back and forth to Ukraine for two years, then decided he wanted to be here all the time and moved to the Bay Area in the late 1980s, where he continued his rise and established himself as a creative force in Western pop culture.

Popov has successfully combined classical and modernist traditions in a style distinctly his own. His virtuosity with disparate media is clear in his portraiture, where he captures the true essence of each person, and his repertoire of works ranging from printmaking, social satire, and photorealism. 

Peter Selz, portrait by Valentin Popov

Popov painted two portraits of Peter Selz. The piece in the SVMA exhibition is the second. Popov explains he based his vision on Selz, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 100. When painting the eyes, Popov decided to change the perspective and show Selz looking up like a visionary. When he added another set of eyes above those already painted, he intended to paint over the set he did not use. In a last-minute twist, he saw that leaving both sets of eyes accomplished his goal. As a final touch, applying final brushwork from left to right in horizontal lines showed a sense of time passing.

Frequent trips to the California coastal areas over several years inspired his seascape paintings. He finds the wave series metaphorical and metaphysical; the portraits of people in the water continually change with ever-evolving ideas and new materials. Currently, there are 11 in that genre.

He has had many exhibitions over the years and is in the public collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Duke University, and Fine Arts Museums of California, among dozens of other venues. Popov is “beyond happy” with the exhibition at SVMA, thrilled with Linda Keaton’s curation and the technically proficient installation work of the SVMA staff.

Popov’s parallel focus is writing. His book “Ironic Icons” will be released this October.

Event: Valentin Popov in Conversation + Martinis and Caviar

An afternoon conversation and tasting with artist Valentin Popov, Kevin McNeely, whose portrait Popov has painted, and Pierre-Yann Guidetti, Popov’s long-time friend and art supplier. Vodka provided by Hanson of Sonoma and Tsar Nicoulai Caviar, courtesy of Pacific Plaza Imports, will be the featured taste. $25-$35. Svma.org

 

Jackie Lee is a writer and artist living in Sonoma. A supporter of the local visual arts scene in all its forms, her focus is to showcase individual events and artists as well as those represented by established galleries. [email protected].




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