Alexei Adamov

Russian painter Alexei Adamov – who splits his time between Moscow and his seaside hometown Taganrog – creates subtle and majestic landscapes. Shifting between pastoral and seaside visions, he renders nature in an exquisitely immersive aesthetic, evoking all manner of tactile, aural and olfactory information. Looking at one of Adamov’s woodland paths or beachfront vistas conjures the smells, sounds and sensations of those spaces. This instantly resonant sensorial experience likens his work to that of preceding Russian romantic and realist painters, but Adamov’s refined sense of light and application give his art a uniquely luminescent quality.

Observed in detail, each work features a gentle pattering of small paint daubs, a trace of impressionism that lends his Russian locales a broader European atmosphere. Indeed, with a family history determined and re-shaped by both World Wars, Adamov displays a vast geographic awareness. Finally, light – seeping through leaves on trees and foggy skies, refracted in ponds or shimmering off lakes and waves – lends his humble nature scenes a spectacular theatricality.