Vladimir Tomilovsky

Fishermen at lake Baikal, 1949

Looking at Tomilovsky’s creative life, one can easily trace the main milestones of its development. The beginning of his career as an artist was clearly marked by the landscape painting. According to the opinion of an Irkutsk-based artist Alexandra Madisson, Tomilovsky ‘felt the nature’ and had an ability to see the significant in the unnoticeable at first sight. And that is why he excelled in so-called ‘intimate landscapes’, full of warm, lyrical mood. The further Tomilovsky developed as an artist, the more optimistic and sunnier his paintings became. One of the main topics of his art was Lake Baikal which is situated in Siberia, near the city of Irkutsk where the artist spent the most of his life. Vladimir Tomilovsky knew Baikal very well: for years he had been walking along its shores, sailed it a number of times and always paid great attention to the water of the lake in his painting that capture hundreds of its shades. Despite a human being is rarely depicted on Tomilovsky’s paintings, one could always feel the human presence. Tomilovsky wrote his paintings for people, in order to bring us closer the treasures of nature. Probably that is why the painting called ‘The Pearl of Lake Baikal’ is exhibited for many years in the Museum of the Irkutsk Limnological Institute situated on the shore of the lake.

Construction of Ust-Ilimskaya Hydroelectric Station, 1984

In the beginning of the seventieths, many things that Tomilovsky painted before stopped satisfying him. Over sudden he felt the fast pulse of the new industrial developments in Siberia. Being inspired by the technological progress, Tomilovsky asked himself a profound question: ‘what should a new art be like?’ He answered his question with a new topic in his art dedicated to depicting the massive hydroelectric stations construction sites, which were the grandest and the most inspirational developments in Siberia at that time. This new inspiration was a major turn in the artist’s creative style as Tomilovsky decided that such pieces of art should not be ‘painted’ but rather ‘constructed’ as the industrial developments themselves. It was the new style of Tomilovsky’s paintings which aimed to depict the grandeur and scale of the Soviet construction projects of the second half of the 20th century. According to A. Madisson, this period of Tomilovsky’s art could be characterised by the opinion he stated at the opening of one of his exhibitions: ‘We should enter the spaciousness of the brand new art, wide vision, and bolder solutions, where all the small and unnecessary is swept aside’.

On the edge of the 21st century, 1990

The Great Martian God (fresco)

A new turn signified the late period of Tomilovsky’s creative live. His art became more laconic and the themes of endless cosmic eternity and the momentary human life became more pronounced. One can find these reflections in the works like ‘The Great Martian God’, where Tomilovsky depicted the supernatural forces, the universal mind, and the planet of Earth at its origin. In the late works of the artist, one would not find admiration of the Soviet construction sites anymore. Instead, the message about the fragility of our planet and its nature in front of relentless urbanisation and environmental concerns sounds stronger. The painting called On the edge of the 21st century is a vivid example of these concerns. An Irkutsk-based writer Larisa Lankina wrote in one of her articles that ‘the planet of Earth in Tomilovsky’s art resembles a fragile Christmas ball seen by the artist from the emptiness of the outer worlds; and it becomes the symbol of the human responsibility for its future’.

Sunrise

A very special place in Tomilovsky’s creative work was dedicated to the Sun which is the centrepiece of many artist’s artworks. At the opening of one of the exhibitions, an Irkutsk-based art critic Paletskaya nicknamed Tomilovsky ‘the worshipper of the sun’, which was immediately picked up by some of his colleagues. Tomilovsky acknowledged that, indeed, the Sun was one of his favourite objects to depict in his paintings, especially during the post-war years. The art critics wrote that it seemed like Tomilovsky lived ‘closer to the sun’, admired it, and transferred its shining rays onto his painting.

At one of his exhibitions which included more than a hundred of paintings, Vladimir Tomilovsky was asked if he regretted that many of his more than a thousand works were not exhibited due to the space constraints. He answered this question as follows: ‘In order to evaluate a creative path of an artist, understand his or her soul, one could organise an exhibition consisting of five paintings. But what kind of paintings should they be? The exhibition may include one single painting. But this only painting must be created, and it could be created by an artist throughout the whole life’.