Warmth of the Land - National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus

Leonid Shchemelyov, the People’s Artist of Belarus, is the author of realistic and allegorical landscapes. They depict thoughts on the relationship between nature and people’s lives, on the link between microcosm and macrocosm, small and large, part and whole.

The painting ‘Warmth of the Land’ is a large snow-white canvas literally covered by cold winter winds. The artist recreates in the painting fresh frosty air and numerous tones of winter. The world covered with snow seems immovable and resting from the work in the past year. The artist paints diverse winter. There is a ‘colored’ tree against the background of a snowy white space as a sign of ‘awakening’, as a symbol of the unity of the earthly and heavenly, the material and the spiritual. Actually, this is a conductor of heat, breaking through from the bowels of the earth and coloring the crown of a mighty tree in yellow, reddish-ocher and blue tones. Just like human activity, it brings a particle of its warmth into this icy world: the furnace smoke comes down from the chimney of huts on the horizon and a person is in a hurry somewhere...

But, where is this traveler in his long black coat going? Actually, the author recreates the image of a lost and searching man in this allegorical figure. The image is especially relevant in the art of the post-perestroika period, when ‘where to go’ and ‘what will happen next’ become exciting questions again.