The Russian figurative painter Eduard Anikonov portrays scenes and details of industrial activity with sensitive, evocative precision. Unlike American artists who often depict industrial structures as massive, gleaming forces — either monstrous or magical — and distinct from the tradition of Soviet Realism that idealized the factory and its workers, Anikonov follows a more ambiguous and sophisticated line of approach. Neither wholly celebratory nor depressive, he paints fleeting glimpses from a hard day's work. His oil compositions are executed in an impressionist style that softens the hard textures of the objects and architectures pictured without aestheticizing or romanticizing them.
He occasionally adopts an omniscient viewpoint, portraying factories in dramatic aerial views, with smoke spewing from their chimneys, but more often he adheres to the laborer's intimate vantage point of heavy machinery. As he writes, this subtle, beautiful and melancholic perspective creates a new perception of the habitual industrial environment. "His exquisite brushstrokes and saturated color palette" — sometimes full of unexpected blues, yellows and purples, elsewhere monochrome and more realistic — convey the rough, worn and hard textures of industrial machines and scenery. His canvases neither glorify nor deplore industrial conditions, but very simply and sensitively portray them in vivid, deeply felt detail. He finds poignant beauty in an everyday that most deem dreary.
Read more: Link in page Edward in magazine ARTisSpectrum http://www.art-mine.com/artistpage/eduard_anikonov.aspx