Sergey Zagraevsky

Sergey Zagraevsky was a Russian-Israeli painter, architectural historian, writer and theologian.

Biography

Zagraevsky was the son of architectural historian Wolfgang Kawelmacher and poet and dramatist Inna Zagraevsky.
He began to paint at school and his first teacher was the Russian painter Tatiana Mavrina.
Between 2002 and 2005 Zagraevsky taught at the Moscow Institute of Restoration Arts, and subsequently at the Russian University of Intellectual Property and in the Vladimir-Souzdal Museum. The main themes of his architectural history research are ancient Russian white-stone buildings, the early architecture of Moscow and architectural connections between ancient Russia and Romano-Gothic Europe. His doctoral thesis was .
Zagraevsky was the chief editor of the reference work "United Art Rating" and the author of a number of books on philosophy, theology and the history of architecture. He has written a number of children's stories and many articles of art criticism. He was the founder and curator of "RusArch" – the electronic scientific library on History of Old Russian architecture.
In 1992 he became a PhD of technique, received his doctorate in architecture in 2004, then became a Professor in 2005. Zagraevsky was also a full member of Russian art critics Academy, the AICA, and the Writers union of Russia, an Honored culture worker of Russia, a member of Russian Academy of Arts.
Spoke Russian, English, Hebrew, German, French, Esperanto.
Zagraevsky died on July 6, 2020, due to an acute cardiovascular failure.

Art

Zagraevsky's art does not belong to the classic primitive or naïve schools, since neither the formal nor actual parameters of primitive art are met. Instead, his style was best described as "primitivism", a genre which includes the "primitive" paintings of many artists who had an academic apprenticeship and extensive experience in other styles such as Paul Gauguin, Mikhail Larionov, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee.
There are some differences in Zagraevsky's style; his landscape paintings are "childish" in using a reverse perspective, the absence of chiaroscuro and the relatively accurate portrayal of parts. Zagraevsky uses predominantly open colours giving his paintings brightness comparable to children's painting. His paintings contain neither humour nor violence as these are not normally seen in the art of children.
Since about 2000, Zagraevsky's works became slightly more generalized and varied while retaining their brightness. Details are drawn less carefully although the works remain "childish", with the hand of an experienced artist visible only in the stability of the stroke, the virtuoso technique of painting and drawing, and the compositional and the color balance. There remain recurring features in his art such as a "flattened" sun, squat trees with huge roots, multi-colored water, "album-styled" flowers and illuminated windows.
In the 1990s Bulat Okudzhava wrote of Zagraevsky:

Selected books

History of architecture

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Early Post-Mongolian North-Eastern Russian architecture. .
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Sergey Zagraevsky

Biography

Art

Selected books

History of architecture

Theology

Literature

Catalogues of Zagraevsky's art works