Wall painting, mosaic, panels, reliefs by A. N. Kamensky
The Versatility of Alexei Nikolaevich Kamensky.
Alexei Nikolaevich Kamensky has developed into a unique master of monumental painting, participating in the creation of several significant architectural and artistic ensembles as a monumental artist with a broad professional culture, a sense of color, rhythm, and spatial harmony. He has also made a vibrant mark in easel painting, decorative sculpture, and ceramics.
In his early mosaic "Song" (1965) in the concert hall of the Frunze Children's Music School named after Shubin, the artist managed to take into account the features of the simply architecturally designed interior and its functional purpose.
The wall painting integrates into the space of the hall easily and naturally while possessing the effect of decorative emotional impact, contributing to the psychological mood of the students of the music school towards the perception of beauty. The stylized, brightly colored images of girls, the sun, and a blooming sunflower merge here into a joyful, plastically cohesive melody of forms, symbolically expressing the idea of the formation and development of a person in unity with nature and art. This small-sized work is attractive for its aesthetic quality and logical connection with the interior: "A modestly designed, unpretentious, yet tastefully executed work can be compared to a phrase spoken softly but aptly, thus heard and fully understood. Both this and subsequent works by Kamensky have easily taken root in the city and do not lose their significance over time because the artist creating them thinks primarily about the naturalness and harmony of the existence of monumental work in the environment...".
The interior of the Palace of Marriage in Frunze is adorned with two painted panels created according to Kamensky's sketches (1978). These are vividly colorful compositions made of harmoniously linked decorative forms, based on the plant and animal world of Kyrgyzstan. One of them, "Day," is dominated by warm reds, oranges, and golds, contrasting with the deep blue-black background. The other composition, "Night," impresses with a mood of coolness and silence, with whimsical silhouettes of nocturnal birds, trembling shadows, and a mysterious flicker of light. They are significant as the first attempt to incorporate the traditions of folk decorative applied art into monumental art.
Two monumental colored reliefs created by Kamensky (with the participation of A. Bekdzhanyan) have become an organic part of the urban environment. They are tightly integrated on opposite sides of the highway at the ends of buildings that close the southern border of the city.
Here, a common combination of relief and mosaic used in contemporary monumental art has been employed. The material used is colored Armenian tuff with its noble matte tone and soft texture.
Created in a unified compositional and plastic key, the panels resonate with each other, complementing one another, and accentuating the architectural nodes and gates of the city. The monumental relief images are rhythmically arranged in a conditional space against a texturally worked background of stone "canvases," reminiscent of the mountainous nature, as well as the dynamic, vibrant modern life of the republic. They are metaphorically perceived as gusts of wind, sea, and movement into the future. The figures are arranged in a stepped manner, as if descending from the mountains—this compositional technique helps to feel the uniqueness of Kyrgyzstan's mountainous landscape.
The foundation of the left composition, and at the same time the "entry point" into it, is a figuratively rich fragment—the figure of a Kyrgyz mother in festive ancient clothing and the figure of a child, which together are perceived as the embodiment of life, the unity of ancient and modern culture.
