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.
Kamensky's Major Creative Success
A major creative success for Kamensky is the works that are part of the architectural and artistic ensemble of the Kyrgyz State Philharmonic with the adjacent sculptural-architectural complex "Manas." He created two stained glass windows (in the technique of broken glass) "Sun of Kyrgyzstan" and "Kyrgyz Patterns," located in the foyer of the second floor, four panels in the buffet (in the technique of chiy) "Red Water," "Mountain Rhythms," "Lake in the Mountains," "Plowed Mountains," stained glass inserts around the perimeter of the building, cast iron grating gates, and smaller decorative details.
The stained glass windows reveal the artist's long-standing passion for creatively reinterpreting the wealth of Kyrgyz patterns. Without mechanically repeating or even stylizing them under ancient forms, he masters the principles of their color harmony, the plasticity of the Kyrgyz ornament itself. At the same time, his works reflect lessons from contemporary Baltic stained glass. Despite the diversity of sources and lessons, he creates original creative stained glass compositions. The dominance of red and blue colors, solar symbolism in the form of zoomorphic patterns evokes memories of the felt carpets of the Pazyryk barrow, the motifs of the rock paintings of Saymaly-Tash, and the images of Scythian plastic art. This indicates that the artist carefully studies what has been created over centuries on Kyrgyz land and constitutes its unique contribution to artistic culture.
The entire complex of works created by Kamensky in the Philharmonic building seems to summarize his creative journey while simultaneously demonstrating his new understanding of the tasks of contemporary monumental painting. If the stained glass windows speak of a purely decorative direction in monumental painting, then the panels in the chiy technique in the foyer of the Philharmonic are an example of the fruitful influence of easel painting on the monumental creativity of the artist, marking his turn to the classical traditions of monumental tapestry.
Not an abstract pattern and color, but epic landscapes of Kyrgyzstan arise before the viewer's eyes. This is perhaps the first work in the chiy technique that presents us with a realistic landscape. The logic of constructing the overall composition from four panels is interesting.
First comes the landscape "Red Water," which, in its color and plastic expression, conveys associative ideas of the origin and eternity of life (fire, blood, creation, etc.). No less profound and rich representations arise when perceiving the subsequent landscapes "Mountain Rhythms," "Lake in the Mountains," "Plowed Mountains." In the last one, which concludes the cycle, a philosophical-poetic thought about the new unity of the earth and the person transforming it is revealed. At the same time, these compositions develop the image of Kyrgyz nature, extraordinarily rich in colors and forms. From these panels, finely organized in color and spatial solution, a logical connection extends to the more conditionally decorative stained glass windows in the exterior, which have organically integrated into the modern architecture of the building.
Kamensky's works resonate uniquely with the sculptural-architectural complex "Manas" displayed in front of the building and support the idea of cultural continuity.