ELENA NARKEVICH
Elena Narkevich – master naive style, her work is known in Europe thanks to the ability to truly convey human emotions, delight, surprise, and sometimes sadness. Yelena was born in Minsk in 1964 and for many years she and her husband, also an artist Igor Fomin live in the province of Malaga, Spain. Igor was born in 1963 in Minsk.
Biography
Naïf art is the ultimate wisdom of popular art, according to Juan Ramirez de Lucas, an expert within this field, in which sense he feels it appropriate to exhibit it together as he done, at the Municipal Museum, under the generic tide of ‘la Navidad en el arte popular’ (Christmas in Popular Art). This affirmation may be contested of shared, but it does define a certain approach.
In this case, we should have to acknowledge that the ultimate exponent of this popular cult art, of this naïf art, is found in the countries of Eastern Europe, Russia and Former Yugoslavia basically, and Poland, for painting under glass, where a kind of school or style has developed which distinguish – without unifying- all of its members and works. Sometimes similar occurs with naïf art from Haiti, where a long tradition gives rise to a certain uniform kind of painting. Sometimes similar may also be said about certain Spanish naïf artists, who bring together certain characteristics in their paintings of everyday scenes and daily activities.
However, the naïf art from various countries of the former USSR, its contemporary primitives – another name for naïf painting – tend to reflect the excellent quality, as is demonstrated by the prizes which were awarded at the Naïf Competition of the Spanish Association of Painters and Sculptors. Elena Narkevich is an Eloquent example of this, whose painting we have recently seen in Spain and was very well received by collectors. Her exhibitions in Malaga, Madrid, Granada, etc… followed by Arte Santander and Interart Valencia through the services of the Sammer Gallery have represented a real discovery.
Elena Narkevich is not exactly unknowledgeable or a simple and cultureless woman, as Doctor Juan Antonio Vallejo Najera, another expert of naïf art, wanted to see among of Minsk, and this aesthetic training can be clearly seen in the elegance of her work. Her choice to carry out naïf(of apparently naïf) painting constitutes a voluntary and conscious decision.
For some collectors of this brilliant and joyful art, aim is to relax in contemplating these works after the stress and work of their business or office environments. This painting is made to delight and arouses a smile on the viewer’s lips, aiming to please the eye and the senses. The uncomplicated themes, sometimes tinged with irony – do not present any complex or transcendental situations which may feature in other more pretentious art in the most radical avant-garde.
