Chistyakov Yuri

Biography

YURI CHISTYAKOV. BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE.

Yuri Georgievich Chistyakov (1931-2001) – an artist and architect, born in Ulan-Ude. He graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute. The artist’s expressive means are based on mounted and illustrative graphics, monumental design in architecture and sculpture. He used mixed media, combining multilayer tonal water colours, tempera, gouache, ink, pastel, and oil.
Yuri Chistyakov’s creativity built on the tradition and avant-garde and was strongly linked with the rhythms of the usual and unusual. He stands prominently in those quarters of the 20th century culture where conceptual vision, fine skills, subconsciousness and implications, great command of drawing, perspective and composition, a variety of language and plasticity, comprehension of the laws of disharmony of the black and white, refined sense of colour belong. As a versatile artist and innovator, he was an independent and vibrant talent, committed to fathoming in-depth sense of life.
Yuri Chistyakov created a series of major painting and drawing cycles conveying historical, religious and mythological themes, including “Peter the First”, “The Battle of Kulikovo”, “Word about Igor’s Regiment”, “Wind of Steppe”, “Cosmos”, “Adam and Eva”. He used to illustrate works by such well-established authors culturally as Pushkin, Blok, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov, Cervantes, and Swift. His illustrations are a precise and accurate follow-up to the authors’ message. Associations and metaphors abound in the graphical texts and easily blend in with the poetic conception. The artist’s favourite protagonist was man. Portraits, sharp-witted sketches, posters, popular prints similar to cartoons, utopias and fantasies were his response to man’s sentiment. Themes of the Russian and Buryat epic traditions are pervasive there, in his own portrayals of recluses, pilgrims and centaurs, heirs to Siberian freedom in the open wilds.
Yuri Chistyakov was a renowned designer of systemic monumental projects. His creative fellowships with other prominent sculptors produced and erected monuments “To the Fallen in the Great Patriotic War”, to Suvorov in Tiraspol, to Avicenna in Tashkent, to Indira Gandhi in India, to St.Vladimir in St.Daniel’s Monastery of Moscow, to St.Vladimir the Baptist in Argentina, to conductor Sveshnikov. The artist’s designs of the monuments in memory of Yesenin for Tashkent, in memory of Vysotsky, Okudzhava for Moscow and others were exhibited at All-Union and Customized competitions.
A few of them were prizewinners. Embassies, museums and major exhibition centres used to host the artist’s personal exhibitions.
His works dedicated to Peter the Great were on display during the celebrations of the 300th Anniversary of St.Petersburg; Interfax, St.Peterburg, 2004.
A village of Mikhailovskoye (Pushkin Mountains) hosted an exhibition of Puskiniana select works in 2004. The Russian Union of Architects played host to two exhibitions Tones of Pearl Water Colours in 2004 and Book Drawings in 2006.
The Road Albums were showcased in Moscow’s Gostiniy Dvor in 2007.
In 2004-2008, two festivals in the Manege Central Exhibition Hall, book fairs and antiques’ shows featured works by the artist.
Yuri Chistyakov’s illustrations became part of nine books, including a uniquely decorated hand-made leather-bound digest of historic document about Peter the First and his days (Publisher – A.Vyatkin, 2007). In 2007, a book under the title “Yuri Chistyakov. Drawings” was published by Pskov’s State Unitary Enterprise.

Yuri Chistyakov is a member of the Russian Union of Architects, decorated with Vuchetich Golden Medal, golden and silver medals at various exhibitions. The artist’s works are scattered across private collections in the country and overseas.