Artists / Vystropov Andrej

Andrei Vystropov’s paintings are dreams, full of symbols and archetypes. They evoke a world where everything is enigmatic and significant, where one finds what one is searching for. Behind the banal reality of a canvas coated with paint, another dimension emerges, bringing up its specific logic of events, its invariably different dramatic perspective.
However, given the artist’s poly-semantic metaphor of his subjects, their disquieting dramatic tension is always balanced with a strict counterpoise of unmistakable composition, unquestionable perfection of the artist’s brush and his artistic taste.
Andrei Vystropov’s paintings attract your attention again and again, and each new viewing of them results in a new detail or unusual shade discovered, in a new, unexpected echo of your heart, in another deep and significant revelation. They are always the same and they are always different. They are like a miraculous resonator, responding to every trembling of your soul.
Vysropov’s artistic formation was impetuous and successful, largely due to fortunate circumstances: the wealth of art and intellectual atmosphere of Leningrad, where he studied, the century-long tradition of The Academy of Art, and the studio of the famous Russian painter, E.E. Moiseenko, where he mastered drawing. The remarkable wealth of Leningrad’s art museums provided the conditions for a profound and fruitful experience of world art, from the classics up to the avant-garde. There, Vystropov perfected his technical skills and adopted the spiritual experience of great artists.
In 1987, Vystrupov’s graduate work, a painting entitled "Widows," was recognized as the best graduate work in the USSR. A year later, this picture was shown in New York at the exhibition "Best Students’ Works of the USSR Academy of Art at the New York Academy of Art." In 1989, Vystropov joined the Union of Artists of the former USSR, thus having overcome a very important hurdle of an official artistic career by the age of 28. By this time, his artistic style was finally defined as symbolic neo-romanticism.
Speaking philosophically, the characteristic feature of Vystropov’s works is his attempt to comprehend the essence of events. His pictures are a special space, not only constructed according to the classical laws of perspective, but also saturated with emotions of contemporary reality. Each canvas is the beginning of a long reflection, an immersion in a world of complex associations. Each is distinguished with simplicity, clarity and great technical skill. There is a close connection between the spirituality of the image and the technical accomplishment - one of the main lessons learned by Vystropov from the techniques and art of the Renaissance masters. These lessons are enriched by the experience of a person who has already entered the new millennium, whose vital questions are: What is the meaning if life? What is the meaning of good and evil? Vystropov is trying to find answers to these questions but, as in life, the answers cannot be unequivocal.
The artist’s series "Twelve Months" personifies the harmony of Nature’s ongoing renewal. In the painting entitled "Everybody Carries His Cross," life consists of tragic spiritual searching and suffering, something that everyone experiences to a greater or lesser degree. The meaning of the painting "Good and Evil" is a scrupulous moral search in a sequence of life’s conflicts.
Between 1994-1995, Vystropov took part in two major art projects.
The first of them was in Furstenhagen Church, near Berlin, where the artist designed seventeen stained-glass windows, depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. This work was one more interpretation of biblical myths, laconic and tragic.
The second project, connected with the opening of the Rhein-Main Theatre near Wiesbaden, was an artistic illustration of myths of the present day. Vystropov has created four large paintings devoted to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Sunset Boulevard," which has been playing at that theater since 1995.
Together with these major projects, Andrei Vystropov has been constantly creating new pictures. Each of them is a strong alloy of spiritual insight, scrupulous intellectual work and masterly technique. Each of them is a search and a discovery.
These canvases are the essence and the meaning of the artist’s life.



Piotr Litviskiy
Honored Painter of Russia,
Professor of the V.I. Surikov Institute