Kastus Sharanhovich. Memoirs

Opening: 13.10.2021

Kastus Sharanhovich. Memoirs

The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus opens the exhibition ‘Kastus Sharanhovich. Memoirs. On the Occasion of the 65th Anniversary of the Artist’ at 5.00 p.m. on October 13, 2021. It is dedicated to the 65th anniversary of Kanstantsin Sharanhovich, the outstanding graphic artist, illustrator and teacher.

The creative heritage of Kanstantsin Sharanhovich is extremely diverse: easel graphic series, illustrations and covers for magazines and books – stories by Belarusian and foreign writers, children’s fairy tales, as well as drawings, self-portraits and caricatures. He is a talented graphic artist and master of colorful portraits, a skilled painter and teacher by God...

The artist felt the line as he breathed, and he depicted the characters with incredible emotionality and poignancy. In his works there are deeply designed details, the perfection of the composition and almost sculptural monumentality of images. But, the most important thing is expression, sensuality and the true creator’s sincerity.

This year, Kanstantsin Sharanhovich would have turned 65 years old. He was born in 1956. The permutations of numbers emphasize the injustice of fate: the youngest in the family, but his brother Vasil, who is 17 years older, saw Kanstantsin to his final journey.

It was Vasil Sharanhovich who brought Kanstantsin to art. Vasil moved him from Latvia, where their parents lived at that time, to Belarus. Kanstantsin prepared for entering the Republican Boarding School named after Ivan Akhremchyk. Kanstantsin dreamed of sculpture, but circumstances turned out so that he became a graphic artist...

His diploma work is illustrations for Ivan Mieliezh’s novel ‘The Storm’s Breath’, as well as the later ‘Portrait of the Mother’ that is still a distinctive phenomenon in art today. He had a superior knowledge of the dry needle technique. Their dramatic and dynamic composition deprived of prolixity and modeling of volumes in bold strokes emphasizes their almost sculptural monumentality. But, the main thing is bright, tense, tragic and very expressive characters.

Illustrations were something special in Kanstantsin Sharanhovich’s creativities. In the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of books with a series of adventures and science fiction were published in various Belarusian publishing houses. The drawings were made with sincere simplicity and professional responsibility. This was the artist’s approach to everything – to friendly caricatures, self-portraits and quick pencil sketches of friends. He lived ‘among people and with people’, as his father Piotr Sharanhovich, a village blacksmith, said about the son. He had a full life of pleasure and happiness, and with an open heart...

Kanstantsin has not been with us for seven years. Today, we remember this with light sadness. Unfinished singing... Unrealized talent...