Peter Dik. Pastel

The Erarta Museum presents an exhibition by the eminent artist Peter Dik (1939-2001), in whose work the beauty of nature and the tragic experiences of Soviet childhood are combined. The author’s works are kept in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum.

The author’s style of Peter Dik was formed under the influence of the beauty of nature and the tragic experiences of Soviet childhood. Dik was born into a family of ethnic Germans in Altai, where he was surrounded by "the boundless sea of feather grass and a huge sky." Any element that appeared in such a space was perceived as significant.

When the war started, the boy’s mother was sent to labor camps, and his father - to the front, where he returned from at the end of the 42nd, suffering from tuberculosis. The quick death of his father was the first serious shock for Peter. “Life in the post-war years was no better than in war: the same hunger, the same need to fight for survival,” the artist recalls. “Besides, this is life under the supervision of the commandant’s office.” My reaction to everything around was a strong resistance. ”

It was the “sense of resistance”, which over time degenerated into instinct, and an acute thirst for justice throughout life that gave Peter Dik the strength and courage to defend his aesthetic choice. This is partly why he chose the graphics section in the Union of Artists: there was more freedom of expression than in painting or sculpture, for example. At the same time, Dik worked at the table for a long time: the author got the opportunity to exhibit only with the beginning of reformation.

Then, in the late 80s, Peter Dik “found” his technique - pastel on sandpaper. It allowed him to literally draw the viewer into the work: the dark background and graininess of the material give the pastels a special depth, emphasize the saturation of color and tone. Inside the graphic sheet, the density of the pastel seems to change the familiar relationship between space and time: “gravity increases, the darkness thickens, and the light becomes saturated”. So the artist achieved a special drama, which creates both a physical and a metaphysical sense of eternity in his works.

The graphics of Peter Dik are characterized by otherness, special humanity and a silent secret - thanks to these features, the laconic aesthetics of the author's works becomes ethics.