Alexey Nikolaevich Kamensky

If A. Voronin early established himself as a realist artist with a distinctive creative face, then Alexey Nikolaevich Kamensky worked for twenty years in easel painting both in a conventionally decorative style and in a realistic manner, never refusing from working from life.
In the formal structure of the painting "Oodarysh" (1970), the artist's fascination with ancient Russian painting is evident. On a neutral conventional background, several groups that are not plot-related are depicted, composed according to formal criteria of color and plastic equilibrium.
In the center, there is a competing group of horsemen-wrestlers, around them, seemingly indifferent to them, sits a woman by a yurt, a departing man, next to him — without any hint of communication between themselves — two more women, and finally, two groups of conversing men. According to the artist's intention, the theme of the painting was meant to be human indifference (analogous to "The Fall of Icarus" by P. Bruegel), however, the plot itself turned out to be significantly smaller than the artistic solution.
The central group, which gave the painting its title, is rendered in a darkened color palette and is less expressive in both drawing and color than the other groups. The conventional background and the sharp disparity in the scale of the figures suggest both different spatialities and even different times of the events taking place. In terms of plot, the idea of selfishness, conveyed through indifference to the game, sounds somewhat anecdotal, as each of the secondary groups is not only masterfully composed but also psychologically accurately defined.
Despite the shortcomings of the plot, the painting turned out to be a milestone in Kamensky's work, as formally, especially due to its noble color, dense, and complex textured painting, it was created according to high artistic criteria.
In landscape and portrait painting, Kamensky is a consistent realist, while also placing great importance on the decorativeness of his formal solutions, which are always exquisite and strictly logical.

The landscape "Kara-Batka. Glaciologists" (1966), created based on observations and sketch materials, was one of the first landscapes in Kyrgyz painting to depart from the established canon in terms of motif, compositional structure, and the nature of the pictorial texture (to achieve roughness, the canvas was primed with a mixture of sand). The painting depicts a high-altitude glacier among rocky formations, at the foot of which is the camp of glaciologists. The ascetic beauty of the monochrome rocks in contrast with the whiteness of the ice creates a strong decorative effect, while the depicted camp of scientists not only conveys the scale of the space but also enlivens the motif with the presence of humans. The painting accurately conveys the natural state of a gray, sunless day — cold and harsh, pure and transparent.
In portrait painting, Kamensky evolved from decorative-conventional ("Woman with an Orange," 1974) to a realistically credible representation of a person ("Tanya Popova," 1982; "Artists-veterans of the Great Patriotic War — R. Nudel, K. Kerimbekov, A. Dukhanin," "Gapar Aitiev," 1985). Remaining true to an exquisitely beautiful pictorial form, Kamensky, with a fine sense of color, applies it moderately in his portraits of the 1980s, achieving coloristic expressiveness through a complex interplay of dense brown or muted green colors and gray tones. In the portraits, alongside reflecting external and psychological similarities, the artist addresses purely artistic tasks, being demanding in his choice of model to express his ethical views from aesthetic positions.