News / Art
Alexey Steele Masterdrawing Acquired by Carnegie Art Museum Links Figurative Art to Our Era of Crisis
The result of over ten years of conceptual development, the work represents a visual premonition of an impending crisis we now experience. It is an inspiring and self-examining message for our time.
Participate in a virtual unveiling of the Carnegie Art Museum's new acquisition to its permanent collection of California art of a major master drawing by Alexey Steele of Los Angeles. “… Approaching Thunder” links figurative art to our era of crisis.
The work is the result of over ten years of conceptual development; and represents a visual premonition of an impending crisis, which we now experience. At the same time its imagery conveys an emphatic sense of human’s capacity of overcoming own shortfalls. It is an inspiring and self-examining message at the time of trial.
The artist will discuss the evolution stages of works’ concepts and symbolism, large-scale drawing techniques within the development of his career as well as a place of art within a context of society facing peril of its own making.
In 2005 the Carnegie Art Museum hosted an exhibit of Alexey Steele’s full-scale drawings for a ceiling painting commissioned for a private Bel Air residence, entitled The Soul of the Hero. These life-sized figures portrayed the five stages of the soul's journey to fulfill its destiny, reflecting the artist’s allegorical approach to composition.
“The Carnegie is pleased to have acquired a stunning new master work by this artist that shares inspiring compositional scope, breath-catching acuity and heroic allegory directly related to our times. Rarely in current California Art is such adroit draughtsmanship with colored Conté crayon employed to relate contemporary issues. Here Nature’s thunder rolls over the ocean reaching shore at Rincon Beach in the guise of prophetic angels heralding the ominous outcome of man’s greed and literal trashing of the environment.
Imbuing mythological figures with cinematic movement and modern musculature, Steele has created a new classical vernacular for our age. His artistic vision creates art that reacquaints us with multi-layered symbolism and re-affirms our capacity to be inspired by the magnificent,” says Suzanne Bellah, director of Carnegie Art Museum.
“The emphasis on unity of nature’s consciousness and that of a human is a missing link in our facing the inevitable outcomes of our greed and foolishness. By destroying our environment we do destroy ourselves. It is our own greed that destroys us – it is nothing, but our own consciousness that will save us. Art remains the voice of that consciousness when all else fails,“ says Alexey Steele.
Information on the event:
ALEXEY STEELE: QUIET STEPS OF APPROACHING THUNDER
a conceptual unveiling
Artist’s Gallery Talk: Saturday, February 7th at 4pm
Opening with a musical overture by cellist Maksim Velichkin
performing selections from J.S. Bach Cello Solo Suites
CARNEGIE ART MUSEUM
2424 South C Street (next to Plaza Park), Oxnard, CA 93030
at Plaza and Centennial Parks in Downtown Oxnard
(805) 385-8157/8158, fax (805) 483-3654
E-mail, mailto:lisa.horan@ci.oxnard.ca.us
Web site, http://vcnet.com/carnart
Museum Hours:
Thursday – Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, 1-5pm
Admission $3 / Museum members free
ABOUT
Alexey Steele's remarkable ability to draw monumental figures in foreshortened positions reflects his training at the Surikov Art Institute of the Soviet Academy of Arts in Moscow, which was based on 19th century methods of the Russian Imperial Academy. Steele was born in Kiev in Ukraine in 1967 and studied early in the art studio of his distinguished artist father, Leonid Steele. The Steele family moved to Los Angeles in 1990. In 2007 Alexey renovated a cavernous warehouse studio to accommodate his large scale portrait, figural and landscape projects. With works in many private collections, Steele has been featured in American Artist (2006) and Southwest Art (2007). He is a Signature Member of the California Art Club and is represented by American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena.
Musician Maksim Velichkin has been active as a solo performer, chamber and orchestra musician, both locally and throughout the world. Mr.Velichkin has appeared as a soloist with Uzbekistan National Symphony, Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble, American Youth Symphony, as well as Torrance, Westchester, Southeast and Bellflower orchestras. He has toured extensively to Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia with the prestigious Verbier Chamber and Verbier Festival Symphony Orchestras. Velichkin has also been active as a collaborative pianist having performed numerous recitals with instrumentalists and singers. As a duo pianist, he has performed J.S.Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos in c minor at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh, and more recently, Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals in Sydney, Australia. In addition, he also plays harpsichord and has performed obligato parts in Bach's Orchestral Suites, in Stravinsky's opera Rake's Progress which was broadcast by WQEDFM Pittsburgh, with Verbier Chamber Orchestra, and in recitals. His recent projects included a recording project with Maxim Vengerov and Verbier Chamber Orchestra, European and Asian tours with Gabor Takacs and Joshua Bell.
See more at: High Art Forever and Alexey Steele
The work is the result of over ten years of conceptual development; and represents a visual premonition of an impending crisis, which we now experience. At the same time its imagery conveys an emphatic sense of human’s capacity of overcoming own shortfalls. It is an inspiring and self-examining message at the time of trial.
The artist will discuss the evolution stages of works’ concepts and symbolism, large-scale drawing techniques within the development of his career as well as a place of art within a context of society facing peril of its own making.
In 2005 the Carnegie Art Museum hosted an exhibit of Alexey Steele’s full-scale drawings for a ceiling painting commissioned for a private Bel Air residence, entitled The Soul of the Hero. These life-sized figures portrayed the five stages of the soul's journey to fulfill its destiny, reflecting the artist’s allegorical approach to composition.
“The Carnegie is pleased to have acquired a stunning new master work by this artist that shares inspiring compositional scope, breath-catching acuity and heroic allegory directly related to our times. Rarely in current California Art is such adroit draughtsmanship with colored Conté crayon employed to relate contemporary issues. Here Nature’s thunder rolls over the ocean reaching shore at Rincon Beach in the guise of prophetic angels heralding the ominous outcome of man’s greed and literal trashing of the environment.
Imbuing mythological figures with cinematic movement and modern musculature, Steele has created a new classical vernacular for our age. His artistic vision creates art that reacquaints us with multi-layered symbolism and re-affirms our capacity to be inspired by the magnificent,” says Suzanne Bellah, director of Carnegie Art Museum.
“The emphasis on unity of nature’s consciousness and that of a human is a missing link in our facing the inevitable outcomes of our greed and foolishness. By destroying our environment we do destroy ourselves. It is our own greed that destroys us – it is nothing, but our own consciousness that will save us. Art remains the voice of that consciousness when all else fails,“ says Alexey Steele.
Information on the event:
ALEXEY STEELE: QUIET STEPS OF APPROACHING THUNDER
a conceptual unveiling
Artist’s Gallery Talk: Saturday, February 7th at 4pm
Opening with a musical overture by cellist Maksim Velichkin
performing selections from J.S. Bach Cello Solo Suites
CARNEGIE ART MUSEUM
2424 South C Street (next to Plaza Park), Oxnard, CA 93030
at Plaza and Centennial Parks in Downtown Oxnard
(805) 385-8157/8158, fax (805) 483-3654
E-mail, mailto:lisa.horan@ci.oxnard.ca.us
Web site, http://vcnet.com/carnart
Museum Hours:
Thursday – Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sunday, 1-5pm
Admission $3 / Museum members free
ABOUT
Alexey Steele's remarkable ability to draw monumental figures in foreshortened positions reflects his training at the Surikov Art Institute of the Soviet Academy of Arts in Moscow, which was based on 19th century methods of the Russian Imperial Academy. Steele was born in Kiev in Ukraine in 1967 and studied early in the art studio of his distinguished artist father, Leonid Steele. The Steele family moved to Los Angeles in 1990. In 2007 Alexey renovated a cavernous warehouse studio to accommodate his large scale portrait, figural and landscape projects. With works in many private collections, Steele has been featured in American Artist (2006) and Southwest Art (2007). He is a Signature Member of the California Art Club and is represented by American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena.
Musician Maksim Velichkin has been active as a solo performer, chamber and orchestra musician, both locally and throughout the world. Mr.Velichkin has appeared as a soloist with Uzbekistan National Symphony, Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble, American Youth Symphony, as well as Torrance, Westchester, Southeast and Bellflower orchestras. He has toured extensively to Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia with the prestigious Verbier Chamber and Verbier Festival Symphony Orchestras. Velichkin has also been active as a collaborative pianist having performed numerous recitals with instrumentalists and singers. As a duo pianist, he has performed J.S.Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos in c minor at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh, and more recently, Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals in Sydney, Australia. In addition, he also plays harpsichord and has performed obligato parts in Bach's Orchestral Suites, in Stravinsky's opera Rake's Progress which was broadcast by WQEDFM Pittsburgh, with Verbier Chamber Orchestra, and in recitals. His recent projects included a recording project with Maxim Vengerov and Verbier Chamber Orchestra, European and Asian tours with Gabor Takacs and Joshua Bell.
See more at: High Art Forever and Alexey Steele
