At the center of the exhibition path of the Exhibition Le immagini della Fantasia 38 is the famous art couple Olga and Andrej Dugin, two artists belonging to the high school of artistic illustration, originally from Moscow and living in Stuttgart since 1989.
Their books are the expression of a cultured art, capable of probing the depth and rising to the surface, bringing with it a vital and mysterious universe at the same time.
The reference to sixteenth-century Northern European painting is shown in the multiple interpretations of the space intended as a scenographic place in which the characters of the story move. On the pages appear real fantastic inventories made up of objects, portraits, costumes, architecture. The detail emerges with the strength of the symbol and creates connections of dramatic and heroic meanings together.
“Their work surprises with its beauty of ordinary things and the charm of its natural forms. Images to contemplate and ponder: marvellously sensitive illustrations that seem to form part of a timeless dialogue – explains the curator Gabriel Pacheco in the text in the catalog – studies of the intrinsic, basic impulses evocative of the theatrical, characters in a game of chess waiting to make their move. Yet their illustrations are also emotions that are transformed by the immediacy of an action: an object, a scene, lights and shadows.” *
The illustrations seem to contain the man-made grandeur of Humanism and the power of a nature that has never been tamed and is continually able to amaze.
* Gabriel Pacheco, ” The emblems of the immaterial”, in “The Images of Fantasy 38”, catalog of the International Exhibition of Illustration for Children, Tapirulan Editions, 2020
Illustration by Olga Dugina and Andrej Dugin, from the book Das tapfere Schneiderlein (The Valiant Little Tailor).
