March 9, 2011

The Butler Institute of American Art Lifetime Achievement Medal is an honor that has been given to a few distinguished members of the art community. Thomas Hoving, Robert Rauschenberg, to name a few, have been awarded this prestigious medal in past years for their lifetime of outstanding achievement in the world of art.

On May 15th, 2011, The Butler Institute will be presenting the Butler Institute of American Art Lifetime Achievement Medal to Gregory Strachov during a private dinner reception at the museum where his current work will also be featured.

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Gregory Strachov-career retrospective

The selection of paintings in the Gallery represents thirty five years of an artist's passion.

Native's Song Watercolor, 40" X 29", © 2008

Strachov has painted a great variety of subjects. However, his paintings of stones and of granite landscapes are what he loves the most. This is the passion that he returns to time and time again. The examples of work begin during 1974 and continue to this day. It is from this particular series that we gathered examples of work to exemplify the celebration of Gregory Strachov's remarkable achievement. To include all of the thirty five hundred works of art that he produced in his career would be beyond the scope of this review. His series on war, the holocaust, human subjects and human emotion have won the respect and attention of renowned scholars in the academic and art communities. "If one looks at the masters of this century, their commitment and their journey had nothing to do with the boredom of narrative illustrations. They were seeking truths with a very silent and productive inquiry. There was an immediacy to their work, almost like automatic writing. To look at the paintings of some of these artists, and to define them as, 'it is what it is'...is not just truth but profound truth. Developing parameters to their aesthetic mission allowed them to

concentrate within a confined space of a new vocabulary.   As a result, a small number arrived at profound statements. There is little rationale for their beauty, yet these are among the most beautiful images that can be experienced.

The art that has endured through time possesses content which moves well beyond the obvious. 
Gregory Strachov's paintings are not only exceptionally well done...the technique is marvelous. But there is also meaning beyond the paint brush. These are the qualities of art that stand the test of time.
What appeals to us so intensely about the paintings of Gregory Strachov is in the end, the subject in reality moves beyond the subject."

Dr. Lois Zona, Director of the Butler Institute of American Art

“Take a look at the most beautiful butterfly signifying freedom you’ll ever see in paint on paper. ‘The Valley of the Shadow and Son,' dated 1987 is as pertinent to all time as Picasso’s Dove of Peace” “Strachov’s favorite subjects seem to be timeless pet rocks worn smooth over the centuries. His mastery of the rock is profusely in evidence.” There is no indication of wishy-washy fumbling that can occur when painting in the elusive medium of watercolor. His endless range of grays might die in the hands of a less competent artist.” Clyde Singer-art critic and curator -reprinted from The World of Art-1987 “It takes but a moment to determine whether an artist is a “Natural Painter”. One can tell by the way the colors interrelate and the forms intermesh, by how everything is precisely where it belongs and by the sense of wholeness and consistency of the painting. The natural painter possesses a unique gift, one that cannot be taught or faked.

Valley of the Shadow and Son Watercolor, 40.25" X 28.25"  © 1987

This gift can appear among the most traditional and most advanced painters alike. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Watteau, Monet, Cezanne, Braque, and Pollack for example are all naturals. I knew after only one glance at the paintings by Gregory Strachov that he was unmistakably a “natural”.

Dr.George Bolge, director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art

“There is Russian sensibility that has given Russian painters and writers a special sense of vastness and loneliness of the universe. Greg’s paintings make us feel that we are here on the first day of a visit from outer space. At the same time, there has always been something mystical about the Russian viewpoint, in fact, a profound romantic quality, which seeks meaning in the seeming accidents of coincidence and believes in the underlying spiritual connectedness of things.

Due to Greg’s mastery of the flow of pigment, most viewers intuitively sense that his paintings somehow have a quality quite different from a photograph, even though, like a photograph, they often look intensely real. When we get up close to his work we can get lost in a world completely different than the familiar things that his paintings ostensibly represent—we become submersed in a world of flowing liquids and flying and floating particles and explosions of pigment. His paintings are more like Jackson Pollack action paintings than they are like traditional 19th century realism.”

Dr. Henry Adams-curator of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City

Granite Flame Watercolor, 22" x 30", © 2005

Strachov’s painting is psychological, utilizing conceptual forms derived from the same resources as those found in our own nature. He does not accept the material devices of the art as tricks of representation, but rather as means-non-mediated, immensely virtual-of transformation by intensification and interferences on the picture plane. The material means of his art are not artificial since he is inspired by and participates in them. We experience a unique, joyous sensation from the work of this artist, a sensation rarely felt nowadays in society. By communicating this sensation adroitly though a confluence of colors and forms, he inspires us to discover it within ourselves and to communicate it to others.

Strachov does not strive for perfection in the literal sense in his renderings because he realizes that such a pursuit is superhuman. Each painting offers us expanses of spontaneity, one or two realities which , in turn, precipitate several other realities. In the same way, but without any realistic systematizing, each color appears as if deriving from the participation of other colors.

The magical moment which can inspire as much apprehension as joy is the axis on which Gregory Strachov’s visual world revolves. His art is spontaneous, yet fabulously cunning invitation to set one’s sight free. Laws and stale habit, all the usual ways of looking, are banished. There are neither maps not boundaries. The eye makes its own road, confronts of kaleidoscopic change to reach a firmament in which the most earthbound fantasy can fly, yet nowhere in the gravity-shorn world does chaos prevail. The proliferating mass of pictorial elements is contained in a hair’s-breath equilibrium.

If one looked for a general definition of Strachov’s overall achievement, it might be complexity of detail held in the most delicate and precarious equilibrium. Tonal resonance and the fine balance of parts to the whole became the terrain on which he was to engage his plastic skills. A sense of freedom, even of freewheeling fantasy, prevailed, but somewhere, unobtrusively, it was kept in check by a subtle discipline that gave authority to the intricate play of scattered pigment.

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