Igor Donii

View the Igor Donii Collection

Igor Doniy settled in Samara relatively recently. Seven years ago, he moved to Samara from Magadan, in the Russian Far East. He was born in Ukraine, in the Odessa region, whence he moved to the Far East at the age of seven, along with his family (his father is career military). In this way, Mr. Doniy's life line is reminiscent of a large geographic loop between the East and the West, the North and the South. This movement over long distances and different cultures has certainly influenced the development of his unique style of art.

In 1977, Mr. Doniy graduated from the Valdivostok College of Art, and in 1984, completed the Far East Pedogogical Training College. In 1990, Doniy became a member of the Russian Art Union. At that time, his work could be found in Magadan, Khabarovsk, Yakutsk, Samara, Moscow, and Stuttgart (Germany).

Igor happens to be a very private person, one who does not like to talk much about himself or about his art. This part of his personality is displayed in his works, which are mostly done in a variety of grayish-brown tones that escape the view of the observer, even though his works are physically large (approximately 105 cm X 115 cm). At the same time, as one physically approaches Mr. Doniy's works, inner pulsation and probably even the motions of the author's creation can be felt. The surface is full of condensations and tones, on which the observer's eyes can relax. There is an energetic exchange between the observer and the atmosphere.

Having sensed this inner vibration, it may be said that it is then necessary to explore every inch of the work's surface. This surface reminds one either of something about the fertile ground of the Earth, or invites associations of moss and lichens that are spread over the ground. One can also see something from real human skin in his works. There are almost no landscapes in his pictures, the exceptions being "The Town" and "The Cathedral", both done in 2000.

At the beginning of 1990, this painter spent some time in Chukotka, which is also in the Russian Far East. This trip deeply affected him. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Doniy worked on a series titled "Petroglyphics of Chukotka", which resembles the aggregate of his impressions of that region and culture. This series contains some of his most emotionally charged pieces of work. The subject, if it may be called that, is based on the work of the native peoples who mostly make their living by cultivating the skin of walrus. They prepare it with ropes on a wood frame. This gives observers a feeling for that people and their land. The actual being of that people's life is perceived as a symbol of something that is timeless, something that the normal human cannot reach. The observer gets the feeling of the "space ring" that is made by the native tradition. The strained skin of the animals represents, in this context, the "island of the dead" (a kind of native paradise). It is the place to which new shades of people strive to come in order to obtain a new way of life from every corner of the surrounding area. All these "living signs" that were made of stone are set free and obtain again the impulses of a new life when transformed into the soft skin. This is how they find themselves in the author's interpretation of unity of the past and present, life and death on the Earth. Space contains time, which appears as a moving dot. To a certain degree, Mr. Doniy's works are reminiscent of the art of the well-known Muscovite, non-conformist artist D. Plavinski, who used actual quotes from texts that opened the "archeological history" of different cultures. The string goes back to the "Message", in which the shapes look either like flower shoots, or like elementary living bodies. They go just like a curtain of rain or snow and "close" the "mirror" of the picture. The brown surface serves as a background for this author's "text", which is associated with the ground or the parchment.

One can easily see the elimination of traditional cultural aspects in the work of Igor Doniy and the substitution of it with "natural" events. "Nature" in his works turns into a pulsating, highlighting, and gathering of energy that is embodied in the series of works entitled "Space" (1998).

Present in his works is extremely sophisticated texture, made with scratching, and penetration through the painted tissues. The surface of the picture seems to smoke; vari-colored warm tones flow from it. Blue scratches on a Titian background, on the one hand, are similar to graffiti. On the other, they are like impressions from the swinging branch of a tree on a frost covered wall or a simple drawing in fresh, untouched snow. From a distance, they are perceived like organic fibres. The distinction of this glimmering "space" is the special "ductility" of their inner time, by which we get the illusion of visual infinity of these works: it seems they could be peered into forever without overcoming the edge of the visual saturation.

In the spring of 2000, Igor Doniy trained in Stuttgart and left having created a good quantity of canvasses. His German works seem to have found a new tone. In Germany, there had arisen an inner intent, a peculiar opposition of forms. In "The Composition", mahogany color and oblong organic fibers, as if snapped up with a tornado, meet with each other. They are reminiscent of human body muscles. Organic brown-flesh colored forms, that can cause anatomic associations, figure in two other "Compositions". In "The Pyramid", deep red lighting creates a symbolic, ceremonial, and emphatic loneliness.

Thinking about the exhibition of Stuttgart painters in Samara in 1996, one will notice that Doniy's works are close to the certain flow in German art of the 1990s (most likely connected with the popularity of the "green" movement in Germany). Here we can attribute the play with native, organic, biological forms, the tendency of convergence, the synthesis of "the natural" and "the technical" (exhibited there works of Berg, Tzaumseil and Hartlib).

Canvasses of the cycle "Seasons" ("March", "April", "Spring") are just like the pages out of the author's diary, who has deeply plunged into German reality. The thrilling cold blue mood of "March" is followed by greenish in "April", which, in turn, is interchanged by the pink "wave" with blue sprinkles ("Spring"). Breathing "membrances", apart from the stable associations with living cellular tissue, also causes a geodesic association - a slightly blurred map of city streets. In the cycle "Brown Composition", we also see the structural base. Here, to understand the whole understanding of the works is difficult. The main idea is covered by the clotting and waves of saturated brown color. "The color of German beer", jokes Igor. Perhaps it is through the patina of the stones of the city buildings in Germany he has chosen to display his works.

It is curious how our "Samara reality" is displayed in Doniy's pictures. It seems that in his works, it arises as a symbolic figure ("The Clock", "Still Life with a Kettle"). Smoked silver-brown color gamma of "The Clocks" at first sight gives the viewer a feeling of nostalgia: "from the darkness of time" appears a wooden clock with intricate woodwork on the sides and upper portion. It's just like in Samara, but reminds one of Chagall's clocks come to mind.

Does the artist, that has entered the sphere where all "external" qualities of things, need to hold to the anchor of cultural and geographical reality? It seems that the main, key words that open the way for us into the world of Donii's works, are "living substance" and "time". Those who can feel this with respect to what may seem, at first glance, indifferent paintings, will feel the inner attention to everything alive, plunged in the time.

Tatyana Petrova, Samara Art Museum