Draft:Alexander Dosuzhev

Alexander Dosuzhev, Александр Игоревич Досужев (October 31, 1944 – February 03, 2014) was a Belorussian/Soviet painter from the city of Vitebsk, a bright representative of the so-called Vitebsk school of painting.

Artist
Alexander Dosuzhev was graduated from the Vitebsk Pedagogical Institute in 1970. After graduating from the institute, the artist decided to work in Vitebsk. Alexander Dosuzhev not only became a "Vitebsk artist", he was imbued with the best ideas and traditions of the Vitebsk art school, which became the meaning and formed the concept of all his work. Alexander Dosuzhev belonged to the galaxy of masters of the modern history of art, which dates back to the 70s of the twentieth century. This is one of the outstanding artists of that wave, who were called "nonconformists". They called the artists that way, defended their own positions, their vision of the world, opposing their art to the generally accepted opinion.

Member of city, regional and national exhibitions since 1965. Exhibitions in Russia, Poland, Spain, Latvia, as part of creative association Kvadrat (The Square). Member of Creative association Kvadrat since 1987, a member of the Belarus union of artists since 1989. Author of creative concept PLIP (a surface, a line, a spot). Painting, graphic art, monumental art, installation, performance. The artworks of artist are in private collections and national galleries of United States, Italy, France, Switzerland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Israel, Latvia.

In 1996, an article with Alexander Dosuzhev was published in the State Belarusian Encyclopedia.

Kvadrat
Kvadrat (Square) (1987 - 1994) is the creative union of artists, founded on March 16, 1987. Its mission was to organize the opposition to the official art and to approve the aesthetic principles of Russian avant-garde and postmodernism in the art life of Belarus. Kvadrat included ten artists of different directions (from non-figurative art to figurative painting) and different types of art. Alexander Dosuzhev, Valerij Schastny, Nicolay Dundin, Alexander Slepov, Valeriy Chukin, Tatiana and Yuri Rudenko, Victor Shilko, Victor Mikhaylovsky with their leader Alexander Maley turned to the legacy of the creative UNOVIS group ,which was founded by Kazimir Malevich in 1919.



The union worked in the form of actions and actions-exhibitions. The first was the exhibition "Experiment" (1988) dedicated to the 110th anniversary of Kazimir Malevich (Vitebsk). This was followed by exhibitions and actions "Nature and culture", "Flowers and painting", "Man and the Universe", etc. The general idea of the exhibition "Nature and Culture" (1989) was the statement that the impoverished human spiritual world negates any achievements in the field of social and economic development, and, most importantly, deepens the gap between man and nature. At that time Kvadrat literally "blew up" a quiet art life of Vitebsk with the loud actions and performances.

The last action - holding the I International Plein-air "Malevich. UNOWIS. Modernity" (20.08. - 15.09. 1994). Guests from the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), Malevich Fund (Moscow), National Art Museum (Minsk), representatives of Vitebsk branch of Belarusian Soros Fund and also representatives of foreign and native press attended its opening.

The idea of Kvadrat was simple: to create a creative space, an environment in which everyone could develop without interfering with each other. By the way, it was the first association of artists in Belarus, and, one might say, it became a need, a breath of time at the turn of the stagnation era. During its existence Kvadrat represented Vitebsk art school at exhibitions in Russia, Germany, Poland, Spain. Members of the association exhibited in Italy, Finland, South Korea, Canada, United States, Israel and even in distant Australia.

In 1994 the association broke up. The official reason was that Kvadrat had fulfilled its main function of rehabilitating conceptual art in Belarusian culture. However, according to the members of the group, the artists "grew up" from the association, each of them had formed their own individual plastic language by that time, and the association's concept of adhering only to the informal painting became uncomfortable for them, and they decided to develop their own personal style characteristics of creativity.

The association announced a new theory of artistic development, widely using iconic forms. Artists-members of Kvadrat with their works began to convince the viewer that a work of fine art, not having a plot, is able to influence the person. Alexander Maley and Alexander Dosuzhev in their creative activity tried to find ways of further development of Suprematism, filling Malevich's ideas with modern content.



PLIP
The PLIP (Poverkhnost, Liniya I Pyatno) (Поверхность, Линия И Пятно) concept became a manifestation of the harmonization that distinguished Alexander Dosuzhev's personality, defining a very special place for the artist's work in the cultural context of modernity. PLIP was a spiritual platform for his entry into Eternity. The three categories (surface-line-spot) of PLIP express the integrative existence of heterogeneous principles.

Alexander Dosuzhov's surface is an analogue of the Infinity space, the equanimity of the boundless sea of Being, the perfection and fullness of the Infinity. The line represents the radical tendencies to break this space, through which a new revelation must be manifested, something that has never been and is fundamentally impossible for the very order of existence. The surface is the expression of the space of absolute being, the line represents the tendency to tear its fabric. The Spot, on the other hand, represents the principle of self-generation of life and clots of awareness, which can possess the properties of the Cosmic Egg. The interaction of these three categories reveals a complex cosmological system, which Alexander Dosuzhev formulated and expressed in his work. And each painting by the artist reveals specific principles of this interaction mystery.



Alexander Dosuzhev justified the author's idea of PLIP as follows: The Eternal Surface is our land. The lines of rivers, roads and our destinies. Spots of the fields of forests and our faces constantly change their color (briefly: surface, line, spot).

The PLIP works are compositions, on the one hand simplified, and on the other hand filled with some content: a few spots on the plane, often of local color and not always with a compositional center (PLIP 22 (Autumn Equinox), 1994, PLIP - Object 1 (Time), 1994).

Alexander Dosuzhev noted that in the works of the concept of PLIP "combined the rigidity of the lines of Malevich and the romance of Chagall".

Tired of "lack of freedom" and imposed frames, artists Vasily Vasiliev and Alexander Dosuzhev, with the help of Viktor Shilko, created their own project "ABSTRACT".

The presentation of the Belarusian project Art Zabor took place in the Belarusian embassy in France, BelTA learnt from the Belarusian diplomatic mission. The fence around the Belarusian embassy displayed the works of eight contemporary Belarusian artists: Alexander Dosuzhev, Vitaly Denisenko, Viktor Alshevsky, Sergei Kaval, Yuri Yakovenko, Vladislav Stalmakhov, Ruslan Vashkevich and Sergei Grinkevich.

In 2013, a report on the artist's exhibition on Euronews is published.

After the death of the artist, numerous author exhibitions are held.