The world of Olga-Maria Klassen

by Elena Ilyina

Head of a research department at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, art historian, former deputy director for research at the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts, member of the Russian Union of Artists, member of the Association of Cultural Managers.

Most people love the sea and admire its beauty. It's difficult to depict constantly changing elements, constantly shifting lines, colors, and moods. But it's probably even more difficult to preserve the spirit of the sea by depicting not the waves and sky, but only objects associated with it that contain only a fraction of its magnitude.

In the graphic works of Olga-Maria Klassen, the sea is everywhere, yet at the same time, it isn't there at all. In the monotypes and prints of this Russian artist of German origin, one finds no threatening waves or calm sea surfaces, immeasurable expanses or intimate bays. Rather, the works simply convey a sense of the sea. And yet, in these works, she can be called a painter of the sea, because the shrill cries of seagulls and the inaudible crunching of sand, the wet chill, the ghostly sounds of water, and the intrusiveness of salt crests dwell in the delicate emotional state of these graphic sheets. But the totality is perceived as mutually oppressive feelings and sensations. The interweaving of the visually visible with one's own sensations is organic, and this is precisely what enabled the artist to create works in which she succeeded in conveying a sense of the existence of this mighty force of nature.

Olga-Maria Klassen was born in the Urals. Her ancestors—Germans with Dutch roots—came to Russia in the 19th century. Perhaps her genetic connection to the Netherlands, known as the "Sea Gateway to Europe," shaped Olga-Maria Klassen's love of water and ships. In the first half of the 20th century, the Klassen family lived in Donetsk, in present-day Ukraine. At the outbreak of World War II, she, like so many people of German descent, was deported to the Urals—and there she remained. The Kama River, on whose banks the family spent so many years, was the girl's source of life and a symbol of inner romantic freedom—not yet consciously experienced at the time, yet an unconscious reflection of being. Who could have imagined back then that the ability to observe and internalize the eternal changes in nature would give rise to an entire series of graphic reflections? Olga-Maria Klassen received her first education at the graphic faculty of the Nizhny Tagil State Pedagogical Institute, where Evgeny Bortnikov, an outstanding graphic artist and teacher, was her lecturer and main mentor.

She completed her second training, this time in Germany, as a student in the class of Rector Prof. Udo Scheel at the Münster Art Academy. During this time, she worked extensively in the academy's printmaking workshop under the direction of Wolfram Heistermann, who introduced her to the numerous possibilities of etching – one of Olga-Maria Klassen's favorite techniques ever since. It seems as if she combined two sources in her work: "inspired by the ideas she gathered in Russia," she embarked on an experiment in Germany. Using the technically limitless possibilities for an artist to realize her plans, she sought "extinguished sparks" of humanity's unity with nature; calmly and modestly, she gave people the ability, often lost today, to contemplate what is taken for granted.

Nevertheless, the Russian industrial city of Nizhny Tagil in the Urals proved crucial for the author's development as an artist. There, in the late 20th century, a specific stratum of artistic intellectuals defined the standards for the development of visual art in the region. Its origins lie in classical abstraction, which freely operates with symbols, yet at the same time does not separate itself from figuration and actively embraces the impulses of nature. The Tagil artists are distinguished by their high level of professionalism, their experimentation with open spaces and surfaces, and their purely artistic approach to forms and structures. Well-versed in the traditions of world art, they created works charged with sensitivity and optical accents; a kind of play emerged in which representation was elevated to "inner self-interpretation." This combination enabled some Tagil artists to become recognized representatives of European graphic art, and even to become its most important. The leading among them is Evgeny Bortnikov, a master of miniature prints and bookplates, who also works as a book illustrator and is active in watercolor, pastel, drawing, and other media. Olga-Maria Klassen's proximity to the Tagil art movement is defined both by her practical skills and her own reflexivity, which focuses her attention primarily on herself: on rethinking the experience of art and her own memory, as well as on the mechanisms of perceiving reality. Olga-Maria Klassen's artistic world is both typical and original: through the use of recognizable, object-related forms in her works, the artist is able to focus on identifying her inner life, which amounts to a confession. She does not renounce the visible world, but her figures are not people, but objects that surround her. The Sea and Nature cycle, on which she worked during the first decade of the century, is not really a series or a complete unit. It consists of works of various types and techniques, compositional and representational choices. But almost all of these works are united by an acute sense of total isolation. There is no room for humans in any of her works. Only traces and a hint of human activity exist.

Olga-Maria Klassen's works are characterized by her deep personal experience of reality and the problems of art. This fact has likely influenced the emergence of two fundamental compositional types in her work in recent years. In some works, the artist communicates with reality from a distance. As if erasing the blueprints, she forces the forms of the depicted, mostly large, objects to pile up on top of one another, to pause, huddled together. Despite the fact that these large ships are close together, they impress with their terrifying solitude. They entice the viewer to look from a hiding place into the vast world in which they live. After changing their gaze, she examines a specific object up close: she sees its own life, and the blueprints disappear. Only the form and the surface are effective; the sheet breathes a liberating breath, pulsates, and the depiction gains maximum vibrancy. Such a shift in focus from maximality to minimalism is remarkable.

There is no middle-level view, no actual evaluation of reality, but a dive into her own waves of imagination and vision, the waves of memory, bliss, and dreams. Concentration on these phases of life's infinitely diverse manifestations determines the hidden inner dynamics of static compositions. In part, these sheets are like Braille. Cautiously and doubtfully, the artist touches the surrounding space, listening keenly to her sensations. The author's apperceptions are driven by the desire to understand the world in detail and in essence—thus the concept of its integrity emerges.

The artist likely supported precisely this kind of perception of reality in her black-and-white drawings of landscapes or still lifes, with the dynamic effect of certain static objects that have been removed from circulation and paused. The objects seem to pose for the artist. She engages in a silent dialogue with them. These graphic works are not a new type of landscape. It was English artists, above all William Turner, who invented a new type of landscape painting in the 19th century. Finally, as with new forms of still life (natura morta), the artist's inner images, memories, and experiences are revealed. The proximity to these contexts allows Olga-Maria Klassen to delve into her own childhood experiences, which she attempts to visualize in images and statements. Laconic, almost monochrome compositions, sometimes fluctuating like memories, sometimes concrete—but not tangible, sometimes unattainably distant. In each case, the object-related forms retain their external characteristics, acquiring structures with their own right to artistic impact. Here, the influence of the Tagil School is noticeable, where the idea of the impersonal is a distinctive and typical feature. This idea is considered "one of the most important during the transition period from concrete to abstract art, on the path of alienation from the material world to the proclamation of spiritual values." [1]

When Russian artists in the 1980s and 1990s sought ways out of realistic painting, this trend found expression in a variety of artistic movements. One of them, without breaking with the connection to the outside world, was the search for forms and means of expression of inner, emotional tones—be they of the author or the depicted subject, phenomenon, or object.

Olga-Maria Klassen is inventive in rendering the movement of simple objects. In some works, they are illusionistic, like a mirage, ready to vanish in their fragility. In others, a flexible line quickly emphasizes form, like the spiky stroke in the random contractions of nets spread out on the sand. In these fragments, the simplest and most uncomplicated earthly existence appears, in which the artist seeks true value, its subtle beauty.

The works are neither literary nor narrative; they are like fragments of a story or a novella. The works with a close focus are like "talking sketches," incredibly fluid in their monochrome sophistication. Nets, fish, and sand are the most common. But for the author, they are "...memories of my grandfather, rivers, and seas, where I've been and where I'm drawn to. Each net is connected to some memory, new ideas, or dreams. I find it pleasant to touch the nets; I love playing with their structures during the printing process." For the artist, the image itself is important, the everyday, united within a single system of the universe. For example, the depiction of the fish in the nets on the sand. She doesn't admire their beauty like Japanese artists did. She manifests herself as a precise observer, less concerned with typifying and characterizing the respective object, but primarily concerned with the manner of expression. In her work, Olga-Maria Klassen works primarily in the fields of classic linocuts, etchings, and monotypes—traditions to which she remains faithful. She is enchanted by the difficult technical work and the painstaking invention of forms.

Most important, however, is the immediacy of expression, combined with the absolute normality of the respective situation, whose inherent value is artistically revealed. Precisely therein lies the key to the integrity of life as understood by the artist, to the essence of nature, to one's own path.

[1] Avtonomova NB. Materials from the scientific conference "Vipperov's Readings. 2007," Issue XXXVIII. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. 2008, p. 29.