One of the biggest Belarusian parishes host the exhibition of the unique Belarusian Madonnas by artist Alexei Kuzmich

Alexei Kuzmich

Report Prepared for OCP News Service – April 2014

On the 27 of April the exhibition of the paintings by the famous Belarusian artist Alexei Kuzmich opened in the conference hall of the parish of the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of all who Sorrow”. While speaking at the opening of the exhibition, the art critic Galina Fatihova-Shuvalova stated: “He isn’t with us now, but we felt his presence and his joy because of being able to show again to the public his paintings, unique both in sense and in techniques”. The vernissage was opened by the archpriest Oleg Shulgin – the head of the Minsk eparchy social department.

The character of Madonna is the most frequent in Kuzmich’s works – one can find about 1000 of his paintings of such a kind. As it was told during the opening of the exhibition, his Madonnas “talk in a God’s word, in a God’s light. They speak on the language of light, on the God’s language and with love which embraces every person coming to have a look at them”. In Italy during the Kuzmich’s exhibition people stood on their knees in front of the paintings and prayed.

Alexei Kuzmich has gained his place in the Belarusian culture and the world art. His works are distinctive and easy to be recognized because of his brushwork, his paintings have their own style and own philosophical nature, they state the high duty of any mother. Despite of all the hardships of his time Kuzmich succeeded as an artist and resisted the pressure of various avant-garde and underground movements, having preserved the purity and poetry of the language of his art. During the 40 years of his career Alexei Kuzmich was standing for the timeless values: motherhood, beauty, kindness and humanism. All these values are now represented in Kuzmich’s works. Some of his paintings are united into series, for example “The Golden Madonnas”, “The Silver Madonnas”, “In heaven”, “The sacrifice of the Slavic Madonnas”, “The Polesye Madonnas”, but there are also a lot of single works like “Tenderness”, “Inspiration”, “The Madonna of Belarus” and others.

Alexei Kuzmich passed away in the October of 2013. His life in art became the topic of many television movies, his works are in the numerous world museums and very often people from various countries of the world visit the studio where he used to work. A lot of writers used the Kuzmich’s Madonnas as the illustrations for their books.

The exhibition in the parish “Joy of all who Sorrow” in Minsk will last till the end of May.

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