Konstantin Pankov

Mansiysk and the first Nenets artist. He is considered the creator of the “northern art”. He became known thanks to his friend and biographer G. Gore. He is famous as a very sincere, gentle, naive artist, subtle colorist. During his short creative biography – only seven years, including four years of his student life at workshops specially created for folk amateur artists.

Key ideas:

– In the works of K. Pankov, who painted his native places from memory, features and traditions of anonymous art are clearly visible. The artist is unique as he preserved “pure” ideas about the life of his people and immediacy in its reflection. He harmoniously combined these valuable features with an individual painting technique, an impeccable intuitive sense of color and a skillful composition. In the organization of space, Pankov inherits the techniques of rock art of everyday and sacral meanings.

– Mountains and trees, deer and birds, river and fish in it exist in harmony with human beings. All this is a living single stream in which every component is necessary. A man is not thought the most important; sometimes, he is a small figure against the background of a grandiose landscape; however, even taking a minor place, a man is equal to everything else and is equal in rights with it.

– The plots of the Nenets representative of amateur art are simple: the life of a hunter and fisherman, his relationship with nature, harsh and extremely rich at the same time. The North, like no other territory, plays with contrasts, unusual illumination from a low sun. Pankov tells about his land with the help of such techniques as clarity of contours, expressive shadows, and an unexpected combination of colors.

– Leaves of the trees of the artist are not only ordinary green or red, but also white and blue. And it is as natural as violet tree trunks along with brown and yellow. In the paintings by Konstantin, the sky might be yellow and snow might be bright pink; this was real, not fantasy.

– The unique visual memory of a young man cut off from his homeland helped to draw the usual way of life of the Northerners, as well as nature, so that the lands and plots he knew from childhood came to life and became a narration. When a plot was repeated as demanded by the learning conditions, the artist changed the number of birds, the colors of the forest, and the play of shadows on the snow. Thus, the artist creates his own cosmos, his northern world, where, according to natural laws, life flows and everything has a soul: people, birds, fish and beasts surrounded by snows and forests, mountains and lakes.

– A distinctive feature of K. Pankov’s technique is the absence of sharp angles, as if the world is woven from waves – sometimes big, sometimes small, then smooth, or energetically steep. Art critics compare such rhythm to musical measures when visualized objects seem to swing in a special rhythm.