Interview: Mayis Alizade / Yeniçağ
Dr. Mayis Alizade wrote the memoirs of the painter who shook Turkey’s art arena: Lubennikov.
Even his approval to open an exhibition in Turkey was an event in itself. The catalogue printed for the Berlin Art Fair was brought by the Teşvikiye Art Gallery, the privilege holder of the magazines Art in Turkey and Young Art, as well as the Founding President of the Art Gallery Association, the esteemed Doğan Paksoy brother. As soon as he set foot in the gallery, he called me and said, “Run here as soon as possible.”
Paksoy, who usually expressed his opinions on works of art calmly, this time stopped and thought while looking at each page of the catalogue and asked me, “How can we bring this painter to Turkey?” When he asked me, “You will bring him, you have to do it,” he added without waiting for my answer, “You will bring him, you have to do it.” I went to Moscow two months after TÜYAP held its last exhibition in Tarlabaşı. I will never forget how in December 2021, I left the Çistiye Prudı station of the Moscow metro and went to two soup restaurants and drank two bowls of borscht in each one until I reached my studio at Makarenko Street No: 9 (it was minus 20 degrees). Showing his loyalty to the tradition from the Soviet era, he immediately put food and cognac on the table, drank a glass each and said, “Now it’s time to give you a painting as a gift.” When I firmly objected and said that I would not accept, we had the following dialogue:
“Okay, one day I will find a way to give you a painting as a gift. For now, I am signing a calendar that a bank has issued using some of my works.”
“Then I would like you to sign one of them to Doğan Paksoy.” “With pleasure. Please convey my thanks to him for his interest in my works.”
The people of Türkiye want everything to end immediately and completely in their favor. Although Doğan Ağabey wanted me to get a promise of an exhibition in Istanbul as soon as possible, I knew the character of these people very well; I could not say “Let’s open your exhibition in Istanbul” as soon as I knocked on the door of a world-renowned artist, if I did, the work would be over before it even started. I knew the criteria, and he also asked me to talk to Leonid Lerner, Deputy Editor of Art Chronicle Art Magazine, to test me and measure my seriousness in this matter, and added, “I am sure that you will do very productive work together.”
We decided to collaborate between Leonid’s magazine and Turkey’s Art Magazine.
I later visited him every time I went to Moscow, and as we talked, we gradually came to the subject of the exhibition. And finally, in June 2003, he invited me to his summer house in the town of Javoronki, 100 kilometers away from Moscow. He raised his glass behind the breakfast table prepared by his painter wife Natalya, and the following sentences started to flow from his mouth:
“I found you serious. I don’t need money or money. Every year I have a personal exhibition at Galerie Alain Blondel in Paris. In order to open an exhibition in Turkey, I will have to go and get a few of my paintings that were left in Amsterdam. I will also bring my new works that I will make during this summer. I think a total of twenty paintings will be enough.”
When I returned to Moscow by train and called Doğan Paksoy, he could not believe that I had been promised an exhibition as a result of two years of diplomatic strategy and tactics...
Then...
Then we became very close friends...
When he came for his second exhibition, Doğan Ağabey asked me for 4 sheets of white paper, a number 12 brush and black paint while I was cooking in the kitchen of the gallery, and he went down to the workshop. Exactly 1 hour had passed. When he made 4 paintings on paper with oil paint and came out, after an assessment of the environment, he said, “Your oil painting is in Moscow, May”...
My friend Sergey Velichkin, the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Istanbul, also came to the opening of his exhibition in October 2003 and stayed until the end. He kept asking where and how we found this painter and how we convinced him to open an exhibition in Istanbul. At the opening, one of the most experienced gallery owners in Turkey gave me a very clear opinion, saying, “This country does not understand painting at all. They will say, “Open an exhibition by Pablo Picasso, I will give you 100 dollars.”
I guess it is time to write a few words about the identity of this world-renowned artist.
Name and surname: Ivan Lubennikov. He was born on May 14, 1951 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and passed away in Moscow on October 3, 2021. He lived in extremely cold environments for a while due to his father's duty in Siberia. He shares a memory of these as follows: "When we returned from hunting with a Soviet-type Jeep, the car broke down. It was minus 40 degrees outside. My father immediately took out a bottle of dry spirit, and I had to drink 96-degree spirit from the bottle to avoid freezing." He received 12 years of uninterrupted art education, six years of middle school and high school, and six years at the Surikov Academy of Fine Arts. Starting from high school, he put women's paintings at the forefront of his creativity, and became famous not only in the former USSR but also in the West as a "figure painter who paints women from models." In one of the 1988 issues of the “İskusstvo” (Fine Arts) magazine, he published an article called “Ivan Lubennikov’s women”, when he gave it to me, he asked me to express my opinion after reading it, I was proud of that…
Peter Ludwig, who became famous as the chocolate emperor of Germany, had been to Moscow many times since the late 1970s when he bought works of young painters for the art museum he founded in Cologne, and between 1981-86, he bought and put about 50 paintings by Ivan Lubennikov in his museum.
“The USSR had promised to pay me 10% of the money Peter Ludwig paid for my paintings in foreign currency. When the promise was not fulfilled, I sent a message to Germany, Ludwig came to Moscow, met with Politburo alternate member and Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev and said, “Are you trying to usurp the painter’s labor with my money? I will never accept this”, they gave me the foreign currency I deserved.
I went to Madrid and visited the Prado Museum, I remember paying 6 dollars for a cup of coffee.
Before the opening of his first exhibition, Doğan Paksoy Ağabey published his Turkish catalogue with great pleasure. While art critic Kubilay Akman wrote the foreword for the catalogue, I wrote a welcome article for this world-famous master of the brush in Genç Sanat Magazine.
When he opened his second exhibition in October 2005 at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress Center within the framework of TÜYAP, the Ivan Lubennikov stand was awarded the best organization award of TÜYAP that year.
Because of the endless trust that had developed between us, he never even thought of buying the paintings in the gallery when he attended the opening of his exhibitions and returned. He loved Turkey very much, when a few of his paintings were sold, he would come to Istanbul and definitely visit Hagia Sophia, eat kebab and then go see Cappadocia.
“That place is a miracle, May. He would repeat emphatically that “everyone who has the opportunity on the planet Earth should see it.”
As a mosaic master, he had his signature under very valuable works in several metro stations in Moscow. After seeing the mosaic works in Hagia Sophia with Natalya on his first visit, his morale was broken and he made the following suggestion;
“But that place is one of the most valuable historical works. Every passing day causes the mosaic to wear out more. Let them give it to me, I will repair it in the most appropriate way and deliver it as soon as possible.”
The letter we wrote to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism remained unanswered...
Both Doğan Ağabey and I received the news of his death very late. We could not find the words to express our sorrow for a while as we silently looked at each other’s faces...
As a souvenir, Doğan Ağabey left his paintings and I his catalogue, which we printed in Turkish.
Source: https://www.yenicaggazetesi.com.tr/turkiyenin-sanat-arenasini-sallayan-ressam-lubennikov-867108h.htm