Yuri Mandaganov, artist

The art of the regions of Russia is personified by names of artists, whose talents originally and brightly were opened under the conditions of their time, combining the figurative system of views characteristic for common human and national spiritual culture, and the main thing is they denote authors' paradigm defining perspective ways of development of fine arts.

Yury Mandaganov, the People's Artist of the Republic of Buryatia, member of the Union of painters of Russia, nowadays, is one of the recognized leaders of national culture, who is a success to install new principles and actual style in genre of modern monumental and decorative art. Florentine mosaic, chosen by him as an object of creative self-expression, acquires in the art of a Buryat artist individual and typical features, different from famous works of classical home and world masters.

The origin of this phenomenon is made up of a number of factors conformed to the laws of nature, which played a forming role in the creative life of Yury Mandaganov. Since his childhood surrounded by mountainous beauty of the Eastern Sayany rich in deposits of semiprecious stones, he was interested in decorative processing of this material, which is unique in its aesthetic qualities and range of its decorative and expressive means. The professional formation of Y. Mandaganov was passing due to talented teachers, who were able to discover and to develop not ordinary abilities of a young man on different stages of art training: in Zakamensk art studio, the Irkutsk art college, Moscow high art-manufacturing college (former Stroganovskoe). The structure of personal factors defining specification of forming activity of Yury Mandaganov originally includes a special type of world outlook, as a result of a combined natural philosophic, historical, legendary and aesthetic experience of Buryat people. At least the unique of mosaic works of this master is stipulated by his creative credo: to use in the coloured palette of incrustated panel only semi-precious stones which possess to the opinion of Yury Endonovich, unusual attractive beauty, nobleness of texture and colour and at the same time as scientists-mineralogists state, they contain positive energetic charge, which therapeutically influence a spectator.

Today the contents and style of works of Florentine mosaic of Yury Mandaganov represent a synthesis of oriented culture of figurative mode of thinking, inner individuality of an artist and European school of art skills, mastered in the result of academic education. The figurative picture of the world, formed in the author's consciousness under the influence of process of cultural globalization and personified in the series of thematic works, ranges from bright impressions of his early childhood with its holidays, folk rituals and games to complex conceptual compositions revealing problems of modern civilization and interpreting classic legacy of the past from the philosophic point of view. The result is differentiation in the choice of forms, art language, principles of creating images, which are difficult to classify from the methodical point of view due to the traditional criteria of art. On the stage of genesis and evolution of creative activity of Yury Mandaganov his compositions show motives typical for trends of constructivism, expressionism, pop-art, associatively drawing together the style of a Buryat artist with trends of avant-garde searches of V. Kandinsky, A. Rodchenko, F. Lezhe, P. Mondrian, D. Pollok . Dialectically developing traditions of world and home classic and taking into account realities of the XXI century, which promotes new priorities to the proscenium of the public and cultural life, Yury Mandaganov creates progressive type of images corresponding to spiritual and intellectual needs of contemporaries. The adaptation of contents in creativity to the peculiarities of Florentine mosaic in works of a Buryat artist leads to permanent improving of technique of this kind of monumental and decorative art.

Having achieved mature positions in one of the most complicated art genres and entering conceptually another way of development, rejecting creative standing rules of time, Yury Mandaganov declares by the power of his talent about appearing in Buryatia innovative school of Florentine mosaic in its recognizable national and regional originality.

Oleg Paznikov