Vitaly Pushnitsky

The everyday heroes depicted in the paintings of St Petersburg born and based artist Vitaly Pushnitsky might be seen as reflecting the romantic notion of the labourer in Social Realism, or even the glorified worker of Russian Socialist Realism. In his Meninas series, however, Pushnitsky draws his inspiration for his portraits from further back in art history, influenced by Velasquez‘s subversion of the traditions of portraiture. A persistent theme of Pushnitsky‘s practice is his use of light-filled negative space to lend a photographic quality to his paintings. Yet though they acknowledge the impact of photography, their scale and format is allied to history painting - a discreet reference to the classical tradition of the St Petersburg school that the artist has adeptly re-appropriated.