Igor Galanin

“an unsentimental Chagall…” (NY Times)

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:07:02 +0000

There are artists who appear to have been born to charm and enchant.
Christian Science Monitor

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Galanin deals with one idea at a time; he allows his figures plenty of space in which to breathe. The light is everywhere cool and even, and his notions of nature and architecture are entirely consoling.
New York Times

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His colors are bright and unexpected, like a welcome at the door. His tranquil works play with scale the way a cat plays with yarn.
Newsday

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The artist’s women are something else all together. Busty, big-thighed, voluptuous, these are creatures that command with their curves, not behind your back but right upfront.
Financial Times

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Galanin informs us fully of his subject’s identity, shape, dimensions, texture, volume, and color but allows none of his feelings towards it.
Christian Science Monitor

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He has an ancient national heritage that makes itself felt. Some of his inventions could be the work on an unsentimental Chagall.
New York Times

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The exquisitely done paintings of Galanin are especially beautiful. They conjure up a dream world filled with romantic longings and times gone by.
Soho Weekly News

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These paintings were not, after all, intended to make a great deal of logical sense, only to delight, amuse, intrigue, and enchant. And neither were they intended to reflect a concern for the great formal or theoretical questions of the day. They are too happy and carefree for that. Although they do have just enough melancholy to make them look “modern” and just enough enigma to make them feel at home in the age that produced Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy.”
Christian Science Monitor

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He stays so firmly in dreamland. The poetic imagination is his specialty, and in his case it is an imagination that never runs red hot.
New York Times

“Fairy tales that don’t play anywhere else…”

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:49:56 +0000

There is no reality except the canvas and the stretcher, and this is an extension of childhood, which is of course one’s happiest time.

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The identity of many artists is not recorded by history. I would be happy with such a fate. Maybe I will be remembered as the Unknown Master of the rabbit from Millwood.

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I like angels because they are not real. Also unicorns, for the same reason.

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I’m like a director of a small, provincial theater putting on shows– really, fairy tales that don’t play anywhere else.

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Dark colors, light colors, they are like dresses; you try on all kinds of things.

Beginning as an artist in Soviet Russia…

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:20:01 +0000

Igor Galanin started his career illustrating children’s books and designing sets for the Moscow ballet. Desiring a career as a fine artist in the Western tradition, he fashioned a vision whose momentum carried him with his young family to Rome and his first solo exhibition in 1972. Thereafter his steps led to the United States and several small shows in lovely places like the Red Barn Gallery on Fisher’s Island. In 1975 his work was selected for display in the Young Artist’s exhibit at Boston’s Rose Museum. Igor’s first New York group show soon followed at Andre Emmerich Gallery. In subsequent years the artist has maintained a longstanding relationship with both Jean Aberbach of Aberbach Gallery and Lindsay Findlay of David Findlay Gallery. Galanin has exhibited throughout the United States and occasionally in Europe. His art is included in leading private, corporate, museum, and university collections in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and South America.