Unknown works of mathematician Alexander Konstantinov were shown in Moscow

The poetry of errors in a system of nonlinear accidents

The Krokin Gallery has opened an exhibition by Alexander Konstantinov, “Shaping the Landscape,” which presents early graphics and paintings from the 1980s from the family archive. Most of these works have never been shown before. They open a little-known, but fundamentally important page in the artist’s life, when he was still writing “on the table” and was a professor of mathematics, only groping for his signature style, which would later degenerate into large art objects, spatial installations, and architecture. The exhibition is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Alexander Konstantinov, who died four years ago, and precedes two more anniversary projects – at GES-2 and the Tretyakov Gallery.

Doctor of Mathematical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Moscow University of Electronics and Mathematics Alexander Konstantinov has been drawing since childhood, but only in the late 1970s and early 1980s did his craving for art begin to go beyond the scope of his hidden “underground” passion. Then he was just looking for his creative method. At the exhibition “Shaping the Landscape” we can just trace the movement of thought of the artist-mathematician. A few years later, in 1987, he will join the Hermitage creative association, from 1988 he will begin to exhibit, and after perestroika he will create his ephemeral landscapes, already inscribed in a real city or park space. His monumental “hatch-embroidery” will be embodied in a series of original stops in Japan, will envelop two buildings of the Pushkin Museum, will appear at a private museum in Austria, will result in a whole landscape park measuring 6.5 hectares with exhibition pavilions and sculptures in Massachusetts – and much more where else. Konstantinov will exhibit at the NCCA, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Tretyakov Gallery and work even more abroad – in France, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, the USA, and Japan. His minimalist graphic style will go down in art history, but that will come later.

— People often ask me: how did Sasha, being a mathematician, become an artist? – Natalya Konstantinova, the master’s widow, tells MK. — In fact, the question should be asked exactly the opposite: how did he become a mathematician? Sasha was born an artist: at 6 months he was given a pencil, and since then no one has heard from the child – he was always drawing, sculpting, and was busy with creativity. Then he got into mathematics school, wanted to go to architecture school, but it seemed to him that at that time architecture was an uncreative specialty. That’s why I went into mathematics. Academician Viktor Maslov was just preparing a “labor reserve” – he selected the most talented guys and taught them in a special group according to a special program at the Moscow University of Electronics and Mathematics. And then most of the group remained to work at the department. At that time, mathematics was a rare activity that allowed you to work at home. He, of course, went to the university to give lectures, but he worked more remotely and painted all the time.

— How did the cycle presented at the exhibition “Shaping the Landscape” come about?

— The cycle was made under the influence of Giorgio Morandi, whose exhibition took place at the Pushkin Museum in the early 1970s. Many artists were greatly impressed by her, including Sasha, but he reproduced Morandi’s etchings in his own vision – in ink by hand. From this engraving technique came all his subsequent techniques, when he painted, as he said, “on the city.” Sasha never showed this painting and graphics

Alexander Konstantinov studied human intelligence using the “system of nonlinear randomness” described in his mathematical dissertation. His works are very graphic and minimalist, but only at first glance it may seem that they were made according to a ruler. If you take a closer look, you can see the so-called poetry of error. After that early landscape series, Konstantinov will write a cycle in which flaws, irregularities, and spots appear between the clear lines. “Sasha deliberately drew outside the line, making the line tremble, studying the space of human thinking, which is prone to errors,” explains Natalya.

At the exhibition, with light lines that contain both clear geometry and uneven vibrations of life, many landscapes with trees that resemble cloudy obsessions are drawn. Such trees, only a few meters high, recently appeared in Malevich’s park, after the artist’s death (and Konstantinov embodied the first graphic trees in the form of objects in the 2010s). By spring, another art object by Konstantinov will be installed on this territory. Thus, the artist’s ideas, born in Soviet times, still grow into architectural masterpieces, striking with their brevity, relevance, and lively refraction of the ideas of constructivism in a modern form.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29166 dated November 28, 2023

Newspaper headline:
The poetry of errors in a system of nonlinear accidents