Two irreverent geniuses dialogue in the exhibition ‘Rembrandt and Vlady’

Mexico City. The Vlady Center (CV), attached to the Autonomous University of Mexico City, has organized the exhibition Rembrandt and Vlady: two irreverent geniusesto celebrate the designation as an artistic monument of the work of Vladimir Kibálchich Rusakov (1920-2005), known as Vlady.

The exhibition of a hundred works puts the Dutchman in dialogue with the Russian-Mexican, with the idea of ​​evidencing an artistic dialogue that began when the latter was a child of four or five years old and began to visit the Hermitage Museum, located about minutes from your home in St. Petersburg.

The declaration refers to a set of 4,600 pieces that Vlady donated to the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature in 2004 and were listed. However, after the death of the painter and then his wife, Isabel Díaz, in 2010, some works had been dispersed. The celebration is because since we started working on the CV as a work team, we have promoted the rescue of the donation. It was necessary for the authorities to put emphasis on the recovery, which was partial. Here we had a part; However, Carlos Díaz, Isabel’s nephew, had another, in addition to the fact that he was in litigationsays Fernando Gálvez, coordinator of the venue since 2022.

In fact, on the day of the inauguration of Rembrandt and Vlady…, three private collectors delivered the same number of works that they had in their possession and that appeared on the original list. The restored works are mood (1987), self-portrait made with tempera and oil; Righteous and heretics (1955), sketch of the painting of the same name that is in the Casa Leon Trostsky Museum, as well as impressionist painting.

Constant referent

Rembrandt and Vlady… It is part of a new cycle of exhibitions prepared by the CV, whose purpose is to review the techniques of the maestros of the son of the anarchist politician Victor Serge, since he never attended an art academy, but rather learned by visiting museums. The Dutchman was always a constant reference for the Russian-Mexican, although he never wanted to copy him, but rather explore his art, says Gálvez, curator of the exhibition, together with Silvia Vázquez Solsona and Tonatiuh Gallardo.

On the wall of the main room of the CV the only known phrase by Rembrandt is reproduced: What I seek is to be able to express the greatest and most natural emotion in my works.. Vlady answers him in a note found in one of his notebooks: I don’t want to paint a picture of Rembrandt, but to feel what he might have felt..

While Vlady’s works included in the exhibition come from the CV, the majority of Rembrandt’s 40 engravings come from the José María Lafragua Library of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP). Lafragua (1813-1875), a liberal from Puebla, was a commercial and political representative of the Benito Juárez government before Spain and other countries.

On one of his trips to France, Lafragua acquired this collection of Rembrandt prints with his own resources, with the idea of ​​donating it to the Puebla academy.Gálvez notes. The collection does not usually leave the BUAP. He did it in 2005 for an exhibition at the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca, founded by Francisco Toledo.

An engraving of the sample attests Rembrandt’s only connection with Mexico. In Portrait of Abraham Francke The man who sold materials to the Dutch painter appears. “There was a time when Rembrandt asked him to send him cochineal or Mexican red, because Baroque artists used it. Rembrandt used him to paint one of his most famous paintings: The Jewish Bride (about 1666). It has been proven that the release of red under the different pictorial layers is caused by cochineal. Maybe there are more paintings with these characteristics; However, the respective studies would have to be carried out.”

While Rembrandt made several erotic engravings, Vlady was the first Mexican artist to have an exhibition of entirely erotic work in 1968, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Museum, says Gálvez. The exhibition reproduces the Dutchman’s engraving that represents a couple in bed, which reconfigura the Russian-Mexican, by adding more hands to symbolize the intimate act.

Rembrandt and Vlady: two irreverent geniuses It will remain until May 8 at the Vlady Center, located at 63 Goya Street, Insurgentes Mixcoac neighborhood.