Anatoli Gostev

Anatoli Gostev (23 August 1946 – 15 January 2022).

Born in 1946, Brest, Belarus.
The painter received his training in the Art College. At the beginning of his art career he created monumental works - mosaics, frescoes, scratchwork, gobelins as well as oil paintings. Since 1994 he has been engaged in painting alone. Since 1997 lived in Europe.

Exhibitions: Russia, Germany, Poland, Belarus.
Individual exhibitions: Germany, Poland.
His painting are in the State Museum, in private collections in Germany, Austria, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, USA, Poland, Switzerland.
Since 2002-2011 his painting are being exhibited in K-Galerie im Maxforum, Germany. 2021 - Last participation in the exhibition ART Climate Change exhibition | 13.09 - 8.10.2021 Novum Investments in Switzerland, Basel.

The Great Russian painter Anatoli Gostev left this world on January 15, 2022, leaving beauty and a blessed memory behind him.

Detailed biography: gostevs.com

Half a century with a brush in my hand

« Already more than half a century the brush in my hand touching the canvas or paper reflects upon the world that I create.

In the beginning it was the world of the child, the world of learning, ingenuous, but without knowledge and experience. Impressions from the first artistic experiments resulted in a vague desire to learn this fascinating craft - to picture the world with paints. A foolish desire.

For years I was studying diligently, I was taught the socialist realism and the proper perspective, the proper composition and the realistic representation of the environment. All the time I was carefully wiping the child's world replacing it with patterns that are understandable to everyone. Such a beautiful way leading to a dead end. Simultaneously I studied music and afterwards music alone helped me not to throw the brush into the corner. The classics helped in the harmony of colors and jazz in the improvisation with the shape. It remained to find a language. This took me about 20 years.

Music helped me to forget the canons and patterns by connecting the world of childhood to adult sensations and the desire to convey a simple truth ... a painting is not for 5 minutes, it hangs on the wall and people live with it, it helps to live, causing only positive emmotions. And then ... I stood behind the canvas (as in the ancient Russian icon, with its sincerity, reciprocal perspective and its desire to help). Already living in Europe, I did an experiment - buying a painting one could return it to me in a week and get his money back. Not a single picture returned.

I'm standing there, behind the canvas, in my every pictures and talk to you. Is it good or not I cannot judge. This is my language, and each time, when I am painting, it's like for the last time. This continues for many years. Ii is not much left to me, and to my mind it is very important that those for whom I paint - whoever and whatever he/she is - could see: I give them all that I have. And I expect the same from them. I like art and I love to paint. I guess I was born to do this. »
- Anatoli Gostev

Author's web site