Viktar Barabantsau is well known to connoisseurs of the fine arts both in our country and abroad. He is a graduate of the Department of Monumental Painting, and a student of Hauryil Vashchanka and Uladzimir Stelmashonak. He is the People’s Artists of Belarus. Viktar Barabantsau is one of the leading representatives of the realist tendency in the contemporary Belarusian painting.
Although Viktar Barabantsau is a graduate of the Department of Monumental Painting, he currently prefers plein air painting. So, most of the works presented at the exhibition are landscapes. Landscape is a relevant genre in modern painting, as it helps to expand the viewer’s horizons of perception of the world, and it helps human out of the frames of the everyday life of the urban environment.
Viktar Barabantsau’s landscapes are special with accurate compositions and exceptional attention to detail. The master’s compositions are so clearly built that fragments of landscapes can be perceived as independent, completed artworks. Even small details are carefully painted, so the effect of real images appears in his paintings. Pastel colors and flowing plasticity of lines make lyrical mood, but far from pastoral manner and tenderness. Working with nature, the painter depicts the slightest hints of color and half-tones of the world around. The master changes his self-perception into the objective being of the world depicted in paintings.
The creative work of Viktar Barabantsau is full of the historical past of Belarus and the cultural traditions of our people. Each painting is important not only for its plot, but also for its intensity, format and space. All this creates the atmosphere of historicity. Old cities, historical places and Christian churches are on the master’s canvases. Belarusian national holidays occupy a special place in Viktar Barabantsau’s painting. Kupala Night, Christmas Carols and the Calling of Spring are subjects of his canvases. The master creates an organic mix of nature, cultural tradition and modernity, coexisting together in spatio-temporal unity.
Viktar Barabantsau is the Honoured Artist of the Republic of Belarus
Viktar Barabantsau was born in Homiel on August 28, 1947. He graduated from the Minsk Art College in 1968, and the Belarusian State Theater and Art Institute in 1978. His teachers were Mikalaj Zalozny, Hauryil Vashchanka and Uladzimir Stelmashonak. He works in easel painting and monumental-decorative painting. Viktar Barabantsau is the Honoured Artist of the Republic of Belarus (2018). He is awarded with the medal ‘For Merit in the Fine Arts’ of the Belarusian Union of Artists (1999), the Francysk Skaryna Medal (2010), and the award pin ‘For Contribution to the Development of the Culture of Belarus’ of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus (2012). He is a laureate of the prime of the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus (1990), and ‘For Spiritual Revival’ award (2001). Viktar Barabantsau’s works are in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, the National Historical Museum of the Republic of Belarus, the National Center for Contemporary Arts of the Republic of Belarus, the State Museum of the History of Belarusian Literature, the Mogilev Regional Art Museum named after P. V. Maslenikov, the Yanka Kupala State Literary Museum, the Kuzma Chorny Literary Museum in Cimkavičy Village (Minsk Region), in the funds of the Belarusian Union of Artists, in private collections in Belgium, Great Britain, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Poland, the USA and Sweden.
The exhibition is open until September 11, 2022
