Evgeny Chubarov
Evgeny Chubarov (1934, Nizhnee Bobino, Bashkortostan, USSR — 2012, Mytishchi, Moscow region, Russia).
A painter, sculptor, and an enigmatic artist, Chubarov translated his emotions, moods, and intellectual insights to a new ultimate visual language. Pushing beyond conventional boundaries, Chubarov created his unique iconography that seamlessly merged the elements of contemporary world with the rich tapestry of spiritual art traditions.
For over four decades of his career, Chubarov ventured through the vibrant artistic scenes of Berlin, New York, and Moscow. Throughout this period, he focused on refining and advancing the concept of Pure Abstraction—an innovative intellectual form of abstract gesture painting, where the line and its implementation held a special meaning, endowing it with a distinctive and transformative power.
As an artist of Armenian origin, he drew deep inspiration from the history of Medieval relics, Christian Icons and Middle Eastern Manuscripts, which always surrounded him in his studio. Rooted in the rich ongoing dialogue between the East and West, his abstract works fused the aesthetics of ancient calligraphy and Byzantine art with contemporary painting.
Chubarov subjected the works to a game of improvisation. Driven by the unpredictable nature of abstraction, he experienced this improvisation in a musical sense transforming the canvas into a symphonic phenomenon. Amplifying it with rhythmic bars, visual accents and powerful brushstrokes, he masterfully created a dynamic visual symphony that resonated deeply with its observer. Always completed in sections, with no major “paint attack” on the canvas, Chubarov’s works diverged from classical gestural abstraction, or drip painting, to the realm of new intellectual expressionism.
“There is no traditional center in his paintings. The composition is randomly scattered across the canvas. The works are intentionally created in defiance of academic canons. The arbitrary composition eliminates the internal balance of colors, shapes and strokes and represent “non-relational art.” Nothing is weighed in this limitless freedom. This is where Chubarov performs masterfully.”
— Dr. Tayfun Belgin, Osthaus Museum Hagen. Notes about E. Chubarov
Evgeny Chubarov was an artist whose passion for drawing and painting blossomed during his childhood. Influenced by his admiration for applying art and history. He began his artistic journey by studying jewelry design, weapons engraving, and eventually sculpture – the skills that he would later revive on his paintings.
In the early 1990s, Chubarov relocated to Berlin and later to New York City, where his artistic style underwent its final transformation from figurative art to abstraction. Chubarov was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and participated in exhibitions together with the leading artists of the post-war generation: Frank Stella, Peter Halley, Sol LeWitt and Damien Hirst. Artist’s heritage includes over hundreds of paintings, thousands of works on paper and sculptures that can be found in public funds, museums and private collections around the world.
The Chubarov Foundation has been established to collect, preserve and promote the art of Evgeny Chubarov.
The main goals of the Foundation are to collaborate with art institutions on exhibiting, publishing and cataloguing the artist’s works in museums and private collections.