Andrei Grositsky, 1934

In his obsession with his collection of various objects, Grositsky is reminiscent of Pluyshkin in Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls. Having amassed a memorial of sorts, he left the well-trodden path of classical painting for the thicket of heaps of things. The artist depicts quite ordinary objects, such as half-dead crockery, fragments of an oil pipeline or a sewer pipe, rusty door hinges, flying potatoes, and a watering can that has been apparently been run over by an road-roller. It is not merely a still life, it is destiny that is implied, and not the destiny of the things that are depicted – for that destiny is of no importance at all. His art is concentrated on the picture’s destiny. Grositsky’s works have gained tangibility and texture of late. And their texture produces the effect of the picture climbing out of its frame.

Victoriya samsonova