Naive art in painting: style features, artists, paintings

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

You must have seen the paintings of these artists. It looks like a child drew them. In fact, their authors - adults - are simply not professionals. In painting, naive art originated around the second half of the 19th century. At first, it was not taken seriously, and indeed was not considered art at all. But over time, the attitude towards this style has changed dramatically.

Meet the "naive"

So, what is called naive art? In painting, this term denotes a special artistic style, the work of folk masters and self-taught, preserving the childish freshness and immediacy in the vision of the world around. This definition is given by the Encyclopedia of Arts. However, it is also present in sculpture, architecture, graphics.

Naive art (or "naive", as it is often called) - the direction is not so new. Back in the 17th century in Europe, non-professional artists created their "primitive" masterpieces. However, no one takes these pictures seriously.considered. Naive art emerged as an independent artistic style only by the beginning of the 20th century.

The roots of "naive" are usually found in icon painting. You must have seen such icons in some rural provincial church: they are disproportionate, primitive, nondescript, but incredibly sincere. Features of naive art can also be found in the so-called figures - sculptural images on religious themes. It is customary to install such statues near Catholic churches and churches (see photo).

Are naïve art and primitivism the same thing? On this score, art critics have three different opinions:

1. Yes, these are identical concepts.
2. Naive art is one of the directions of primitivism.
3. These are different concepts. If “naive” is the work of non-professionals and amateurs, then primitivism is a simplified, stylized work of professional craftsmen.

Key style features

Naive art has made a significant contribution to the artistic culture of many countries and peoples. Let's try to highlight the most important features of this artistic style. First of all, these include:

• lack of professional (academic) drawing skills;
• brightness of colors and images;
• lack of linear perspective;
• image flatness;
• simplified rhythm;
• pronounced contours of objects;
• generalization of forms;
• simplicity of techniques.

It is worth noting thatworks of naive art are very diverse in their individual style. Nevertheless, almost all of them are optimistic and life-affirming in spirit.

Geography of naive art

The vast majority of famous naive artists are ordinary people living in villages or small towns. As a rule, they earn a living by physical labor, and they create in their free time. Often the passion for drawing wakes up in adulthood or old age.

Naive art originated in France, but then gained unprecedented popularity across the ocean - in the United States. Even at the end of the 19th century, naive paintings in this country were collected for museum and private collections. In Russia, this direction began to seriously develop only in the 80-90s of the last century.

Talking about naive art, one cannot fail to mention the so-called Khlebinsky school. This is a conditional name for several generations of peasant artists from the village of Hlebine, in northern Croatia. Oddly enough, the academic artist Krsto Hegedusic (1901-1975) stood at the origins of the Chlebinsk (Podravsk) school. Its masters perfected the technique of painting on glass. Khlebinsky painting is characterized by motifs from everyday village life.

Main Naive museums

"Naive is a state of mind" (Alexander Fomin).

Among all the museums of naive art in the world, three should be highlighted: Paris, Moscow and Zagreb.

Since 1985, at the foot of the Montmarte hill, in the building of the former textile market, the Paris Museum has been operatingprimitivism. It owes its origin and existence to the French publisher Max Fourni. Thanks to the efforts of the latter, the core of the current collection was assembled, which today has over 600 paintings.

The Moscow Museum of Naive Art has existed since 1998. It is located in an old stone mansion at the address: Union Avenue, 15 a. Now the museum has about 1500 works. Since there is not enough space in a small building, the expositions change almost every month.

The Croatian capital, Zagreb, has its own museum of naïve and primitivism. It is located in the Upper Town, on Mark Square. Its exhibitions feature works by twenty Croatian artists, in particular, Ivan Generalic and Ivan Rabuzin.

Another peculiar example of naive is located in northern Romania. This is the so-called "Merry Cemetery" in the village of Sepyntsa. Here you can see hundreds of colorful tombstones with poetic texts and original drawings.

Naive art: paintings and artists

Territorially, in the development of "naive" and primitivism, three regions can be distinguished: the USA, Western Europe and the Balkans. The most famous representatives of naive art in painting are artists of the second half of the 19th-20th centuries, including:

• Henri Rousseau (France).
• Ivan Lackovic-Croata (Croatia).
• Ivan Rabuzin (Croatia).
• Maria Primachenko (Ukraine).
• Grandma Moses (USA).
• Norval Morisseau (Canada).
• Ekaterina Medvedeva (Russia).
• Valery Eremenko(Russia).
• Mihai Dascalu (Romania).
• Radi Nedelchev (Bulgaria).
• Stacy Lovejoy (USA).
• Sasha Putrya (Ukraine).

Let's take a closer look at the work of the above "naive" masters.

Henri Rousseau

The founder of naive art in painting is Henri Rousseau, a customs officer who, after his retirement, decided to devote himself to fine art. He decorated his canvases with clumsy human figures and funny little animals, not really worrying about perspective. The first to appreciate the work of Rousseau was his contemporary Picasso. And Paul Gauguin, seeing the paintings of Henri, exclaimed: “This is the truth and the future, this is real painting!”

Ivan Lackovich-Croata

Lackovich-Kroata is one of Hegedusic's students. In addition to painting, he was also involved in social and political activities, took an active part in the Croatian struggle for independence in the early 90s, was twice elected to the Croatian parliament. On his canvases, Ivan Latskovich most often depicted still lifes, scenes from village life, detailed landscapes.

Ivan Rabuzin

Ivan Rabuzin is another Croatian artist, and another prominent representative of naive art in painting. His paintings are often called heavenly. The art critic Anatoly Yakovsky awarded Rabuzin himself with the title of "the greatest naive artist of all times and peoples." Landscapes by Ivan Rabuzin embody purity, extraterrestrial beautyand harmony. Almost all of his paintings are decorated with outlandish trees and fantastic flowers. Moreover, all objects on Rabuzin's canvases, whether they are hills, forests or clouds, tend to a certain sphericity.

Maria Primachenko

Brilliant Ukrainian artist Maria Primachenko was born and lived all her life in the tiny village of Bolotnya near Kyiv. She began to draw at the age of 17, painting the neighbor's huts. Maria's talent was noticed back in the late 30s. Her works have been exhibited in Paris, Montreal, Prague, Warsaw and other cities. Throughout her life, the artist created at least 650 paintings. Maria Primachenko's art is based on magical flowers and unreal animals invented by her.

Moses Anna Mary

Grandma Moses is a famous American artist, an internationally recognized icon of naive art. She lived for 101 years, leaving behind hundreds of bright, colorful and cheerful paintings. The uniqueness of Grandma Moses is that she first started painting at the age of 76. The artist became famous only in the late 1930s, when an eminent collector from New York accidentally saw one of her drawings in a pharmacy window.

The central subjects in the paintings of Anna Mary Moses are rural pastorals, everyday scenes from the life of farmers, winter landscapes. The most capacious work of the artist was described by one of the critics in the following phrase:

“The appeal of her paintings lies in the fact that they depict a lifestyle thatAmericans love to believe so much, but that is no more.”

Norval Morisseau

Norval Morisseau is a Canadian Native American primitive artist. Born in the Ojibwa tribe near Ontario. He wrote about himself as follows: “I am an artist by nature. I grew up on the stories and legends of my people - and I drew these legends. And that, by and large, says it all.

An interesting fact from the artist's biography: in 1972, during a fire in a hotel in Vancouver, Norval Morisseau received serious burns. At that moment, according to Norval himself, Jesus Christ appeared to him. Subsequently, he became for him a new guiding star in his work. The artist begins to actively draw biblical characters, surprisingly weaving them into the canvas of traditional Indian motifs.

Ekaterina Medvedeva

Ekaterina Medvedeva is a self-taught artist from the village of Golubino, Belgorod Region, one of the brightest representatives of the modern Russian "naive". For the first time she picked up a brush in 1976, and already in the early 80s, notes about the “new folk talent” began to appear in the Moscow press. At that time, Katya Medvedeva worked as an ordinary nurse in a nursing home. In 1984, the artist's works went to an exhibition in Nice, where they made a splash.

Valery Eremenko

Another talented primitive artist from Russia is Valery Eremenko. Born in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan), studied in Tashkent, today lives and works in Kaluga. On theThe artist has more than a dozen different exhibitions, his works are exhibited in the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts, the Moscow Museum of Naive Art, and are also kept in numerous private collections. Valery Eremenko's paintings are bright, ironic and incredibly alive.

Mihai Daskalu

Vital, unsophisticated and very juicy plots - these are the main features in the work of the Romanian naive artist Mihai Dascalu. The main characters of his paintings are people. Here they dance, sing, play cards, pick mushrooms, quarrel and fall in love… In general, they live a full worldly life. Through his canvases, this artist seems to be trying to convey to us one single thought: all beauty is in life itself.

Trees are endowed with special symbolism in the works of Mihai Dascalu. They are present in almost all of his paintings. Either in the form of the main plot figures, then as a background. The tree in the work of Daskalu, in fact, symbolizes human life.

Radi Nedelchev

The key object in the work of the Bulgarian artist Radi Nedelchev is the road. Either this is an ordinary rural primer, overgrown with knotweed, or a stone pavement of an ancient city, or a barely noticeable path along which hunters go into the snowy distance.

Radi Nedelchev is a recognized master in the world of naive art. His canvases are widely known far beyond modest Bulgaria. Nedelchev studied at the school of painting inRuse, and then went to Switzerland for European recognition, where he held his solo exhibition. For the sake of Nedelchev, he became the first Bulgarian artist whose paintings ended up in the Paris Museum of Primitive Art. The author's works have been to dozens of major cities in Europe and the world.

Stacy Lovejoy

Contemporary American artist Stacey Lovejoy has gained recognition for her unique style, in which the features of "naive", abstractionism and futurism mixed into one bright and stunning cocktail. All her works are, in fact, a reflection of the real world in some kind of abstract mirror.

Sasha Putrya

Alexandra Putria is a unique artist from Poltava. She began to draw at the age of three, as if anticipating her early departure from life. Sasha died at the age of eleven from leukemia, leaving behind 46 albums with pencil and watercolor drawings, sketches, cartoons. Her numerous works include anthropomorphic animals, fairy-tale characters, as well as heroes of popular Indian films.

In conclusion…

This art is called naive. But if you carefully read the works of prominent representatives of the style, a natural question arises: are their authors so naive? After all, “naive” in this case does not mean “stupid” or “ignorant” at all. These artists simply do not know how, and do not want to draw according to generally accepted canons. They portray the world the way they feel it. This is what it's all aboutthe beauty and value of their paintings.