Ilja Jakovlev

“And I leave, but the bird stays to sing” is the first line of the poem “The Final Road” by Juan Ramon Jimenez. Maksim Princev had a special relationship with this poem. According to his daughter Serafima (who is also one of the initiators of the idea of this exhibition), Maksim loved to quote Jimenez and recognized himself in these lines. The partially prophetic poem is also engraved on Maxim's tombstone and serves as both a prologue and epilogue to this exhibition. We created this exhibition as a retrospective of Maksimi Printsev's work. At one time, Maksim was overshadowed by many as an artist, but certainly not as a person. We decided to tell the era of the story through the work of Maksim, who himself stated that he does not create a career, but art, and that for himself and his loved ones. The heyday and most productive years of Princev's creative activity took place in the most difficult period of recent history - around the turn of the century. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the independence of Estonia, the economic decline and demographic decline of Princesev's hometown Kohtla-Järve created the ground for the emergence of a special and sometimes isolated art world. During the great changes, when many (Estonian) artists rethought the fundamentals of art for themselves, the artists of IdaVirumaa remained on the sidelines, and instead of reflecting current social problems, they revived surrealism as an attempt to "avoid" existential crises and loss of direction. In Princev's works, we find classic elements of surrealism: sprawling images, compositions reminiscent of strange dreams or sick fantasy, allusions to mythology and archaic themes. In many ways, it can be interpreted as a subconscious attempt to abstract and create something "own" and different from the surrounding, very unattractive reality. You can talk about such a general trend by looking at a crosssection of the artists active in Ida-Virumaa of that era. In the early graphics of Igor Gordini, in the work of many artists of the Vestervall group and other recreational artists there, a similar character can be noticed, thanks to which it can be assumed that the art of Ida-Virumaa was separated from the rest of the country's art scene and communities in the 1990s-2000s. in years. Trying to find themselves in this new reality, many artists, musicians and writers returned to Surrealism, which had gone out of fashion almost 70 years ago and which had arisen in a similar situation - difficult times, spiritual crossroads and the era of the search for a "new European" - in the 1920s, between the two world wars. Maksim Printsev's work is part of this story, of rethinking oneself and one's place in society and culture. His images of birds, symbols of the sun, animal motifs, complex botanical ornaments and synthetic portraits that express not so much a resemblance to a single person as the essence of a person - they all speak of a finely woven state of mind, a complex search for self, but certainly also a bright look into the future. That is why the bright idea that the essence of art is immortal is manifested here, despite the story that sounds sad at first glance. This exhibition is a true example of the rediscovery of authors and their works when circumstances become more favorable and the context becomes more comprehensible for them.

Curators: Ilja Jakovlev, Olga Dmitrijeva
Text: Ilja Jakovlev

Exhibition is a part of Tartu Art Week programm.