Exhibition of Alexei Kuzmich – “Madonna’s Temple” at Rietumu Bank Gallery

The exhibition of Alexei Kuzmich "Madonna’s Temple” has been opened at the Rietumu Bank exhibition gallery, with the support of the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus and the Belarusian Information Centre.

The artist’s project is a very bright implementation of the subject of Madonna and maternity in Belarusian visual art at the turn of the 20 ^th and the 21 ^st centuries. The main purpose of the project is the revival of spirituality and classical traditions in modern art.

Alexei Vasilyevich Kuzmich (1945-2013) is a Belarusian artist who devoted all his creative work to the glorifying of female beauty, its spirituality, all-forgiving love and goodness. During his life, the artist created about 1000 paintings with the image of Madonna, where he was relentlessly searching for the ideal of a Slavic woman.

The exhibition has been organised and presented by the artist’s son – Alexei Kuzmich, Jr. “The idea of the project originated in the early 1990s in the father’s motherland. Women of Belarus were collecting plenty of signatures and sent their petitions to different authorities, requesting the creation of a gallery of Madonnas by Alexei Kuzmich, which would be unique in the world. My father is the only person in the world to devote all of his creative work to glorifying female beauty. By using the image of Madonna, he immortalised woman and devoted his entire oeuvre to her,” noted A. Kuzmich, Jr.

In his paintings the artist raised problems of a philosophical nature: about the rationale of a man's presence on Earth, his moral obligation, mission of a woman-mother-Madonna, the spiritual role of Slavic peoples in the evolution of the entire of mankind. His considerations about problems of spiritual perfection of a man, life in eternity and death during one’s lifetime have been fully implemented in his works.

The presented exposition includes well-known cycles of works and separate paintings, the subject of which is Madonna, woman and mother. In addition to these, works from the historical genre, nudes and traditional works from the genre of portrait, landscape and still-life are presented.

“Today we see that modern art is moving away from morality, but as the work of my father refers to it taking into account the time frame, I would like to acquaint as many viewers as possible. My father wanted to bring the ideas about ideals, goodness and pureness to people, and that compassion must be in the heart of every man," says the artist's son.

More information about this project is available on the official webpage of the Belarusian Information Centre on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/belorus/?fref=ts

The exhibition will be open until 20 May on weekdays from 9:00 till 18:00. Address: Headquarters of Rietumu Bank – Rietumu Capital Centre, 7 Vesetas Street, Riga. Admission is traditionally free.

Eleonora Gailisha
Mass Media and Public Relations
Phone: +371-67020506
Fax: +371-67020563
E-mail: egailisha@rietumu.lv