In 2010 the magazine “Russian Gallery - XXI century” awarded Nikolay Vikulov with the silver medal in category “Genre painting” for series of pictures and presented his works at the exhibition in the State Duma of the Russian Federation.
The oeuvre of N. Vikulov is his own view of the world. As if he looks at the earth from somewhere above and sees people, isbas, horses, wells. In his pictures there is no sky, the space is concentrated on the earth.
As if the painter takes a photograph, nobody is sitting, people are building houses, washing themselves in bath-houses, feeding domestic animals and talking. Movement and dynamic rhythms are fundamental for most works of the painter.
The artist doesn’t hide the influence of E. Chestnyakov’s exhibitions, but the similarity of their works is formal. There is no irony in E. Chestnyakov’s pictures. He saw the poetics of a peasant’s life. N. Vikulov is sarcastic and some of his pictures are caricatures representing social characters. In his best pictures there is no criticism, personages are looking at you and they don’t try to seem better and to hide their physical imperfections.
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Every his genre painting is a history and every portrait is a destiny. His characters are truthful. N. Vikulov says that at first he thinks up a name such as Phedyj instead of Phedor, Sashko or Shura instead of Alexander. Then the name prompts which the images of personages are to be. The artist uses methods introduced by European and Russian painters in the XIXth – XXth centuries. But these methods are synthesized and changed by N. Vikulov. «Painting is abstract» - said E. Nolde. N. Vikulov’s pictures are painted on the principle of rhythmic and coloristic constructions, the main principle of the abstract painting. It isn’t important where is the earth and where is the sky, where are horses and where are people in the picture. The most important thing is a proper colour.
Nikolay Vikulov
He was born in the village Mikheevo of the Cherepovets district of the Vologda region on May 23 1936.
1952-1955 - N. Vikulov studied at the school of the factory and worked as a fitter.
1955-1958 - He served in the army.
1958-1960 - Nikolay was a fitter and attended S. Peskov’s Fine Art Studio.
1960-1965 - He studied in the Yaroslavl Art School.
1965-1971 – He was a teacher of drawing and a painter at the regional television studio in Cherepovets.
1971-1993 – N. Vikulov worked as a graphic-designer in the Cherepovets branch of the Vologda Art Fund Department of RSFSR.
1990 – He was admitted to the Union of Russian painters.
Ñ 1965 - N. Vikulov takes part in the republican, regional and municipal exhibitions.
The works of the painter are in
- Culture Ministry /Moscow/
- Museum of Modern Art “Erarta” /Saint-Petersburg/
- Art gallery “Red Bridge” /Vologda/
- Museum of Fine Arts /Murmansk/
- Vologda regional art gallery /Vologda/
- Cherepovets museum society /Cherepovets/
- Magazine «Russian Gallery – XXI century» /Moscow/
- Exhibition Management of the Russian Federation /Moscow/
- Private collections in Cherepovets, Vologda, Finland and Germany.
