The Fantastic Reality of Alexander Saidov: Magical Worlds Thought out to the Smallest Detail

The artist Alexander Saidov devotes most of his time to painting, although prior to his thirteenth birthday which coincided with the first visit to the Hermitage, he has never attached importance to drawing and painting. After travelling to Leningrad with his father, who was an artist, and receiving impressions from the collection of the largest museum in the country, Alexander enthusiastically became involved with the world of fine arts. He enrolled in a school of art, and at the age of fifteen started studying art at college, where the impressionistic manner of painting was favoured.

Rethinking the experience gained at the college, Alexander Saidov realised that his interests belong to a different artistic direction. Initially, he was interested in the masters of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, studied their principles in depicting lights, shades and volume. Alexander Saidov tried to find a compromise between the complex detailing that he was interested in and the impressionistic understanding of light and colour. Inspired by the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Dürer, the young artist started imagining his own personages in fantasy worlds. For instance, he would depict interactions of biological organisms in fairytale backgrounds. This was the beginning of the independent creative path of Alexander Saidov.

The years, which the artist has spent in the army have also proved to be productive for his creative development. From 1989 to 1991 Alexander Saidov served in a battalion with draftsmen, the graduates of the Krasnodar and Astrakhan Colleges of Art. For the artist, this was the opportunity to create graphic arts, since there was practically no possibility to paint. His creative search was still dedicated to surreal worlds, and during this period the artist mastered expressive techniques combining Realism and Formalism.

A few years later, having acquired the necessary experience and knowledge, Alexander Saidov has returned to deeply detailed Realism and began mastering the genres of portrait and landscape, believing that this was the key to commercial success. As a result, the emphasis in the artist’s creative work has gradually shifted to a demonstration of realistic skill based on the traditions of seventeenth-century European art. Development in this direction brought Saidov new acquaintances with other artists and contributed to the exchange of creative ideas. However, he soon realised that ‘copying’ the objects belonging to the real world was of no interest to him and returned to creating and exploring his own artistic reality. During this period, Alexander Saidov was particularly impressed by the style of Romanticism, as well as by artworks of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Nazarene movement introduced by the German Romantic painters. In the paintings of Alexander Saidov, the features of Realism began entwining with fantastic elements and notes of Symbolism. The artist worked in several genres: he painted still lifes, fantastic architectural landscapes and compositions with people and fairy-tale characters. All the artworks created by Saidov during this period were produced by using classical painting techniques and contain the features of Realism.

During the early period of his work, Alexander Saidov enjoyed the challenges of achieving the highest degree of detalisation and realism in his still lifes. The artist has always been inspired by the Early Italian Renaissance art, Academic Realism of the 19th century, as well as by furniture and decorative arts of the Baroque period. Alexander Saidov’s careful studies of nature and his broad experience in creating detailed realistic still lifes allowed him to progress to the next level of his artistic search: namely, he started depicting fictional objects in realistic manner. The artist has always paid attention to the visual component in his paintings, but in the course of his professional development Alexander Saidov has also started closely analysing the ways in which his paintings influence viewers’ feelings. For example, one of the series of his paintings explores the phenomenon of happiness in life. In some paintings, the elusive feeling of happy well-being echoes nostalgic experiences or inexplicable anxiety about the possibility of losing this harmony.

The compositions in Alexander Saidov's paintings are thought out to the smallest detail and every part of his imaginary world seems real. While painting his pieces, the artist almost becomes a storyteller, who sounds so convincing that viewers start perceiving everything depicted not as a fantasy, but as real world, with its own course of life. In some artworks, fantasy worlds are based on myths, legends, and religious texts, which are familiar to a wide range of viewers. This includes the theme of the Garden of Eden and angels inhabiting it, or the world of cupids armed with arrows. These worlds have existed in our cultural space for thousands of years. However, the artist seeks to present them from a different angle and focuses on a variety oа minor details, which are not mentioned in sacred texts or myths. For example, the artist constructs in his imagination architectural structures in which angels live, and depicts these in his paintings in detail. Moreover, Alexander Saidov’s interests go far beyond the existing worlds, the artist develops his own narratives and fantastic worlds. The world of living heraldry of Alexander Saidov is inhabited by revived heraldic symbols and creatures. According to the artist, all symbols, which are found in his paintings, are stylised images of real objects, animals, plants, in which certain properties are concentrated. For example, the Lion is the symbol of power, the key symbolises a secret... The artist returns heraldic symbols to three-dimensional space and generates new unexpected meanings. Some Alexander Saidov’s paintings reveal tendencies to unification of distinct fantastic worlds, but the artist believes that part of what he has created will forever remain intact.

The artist masterly conveys all the subtle nuances in his paintings, which sometimes may make an impression of excessive complexity and pretentiousness. However, strangely enough, Alexander Saidov looks for inspiration in simple things, or rather in beauty itself. The artist may be inspired by the common objects he likes or photographs, which are pleasing to the eye. Sometimes he finds inspiration in the works of other artists, whose paintings contain hidden meanings and provoke philosophical reflections, which, in turn, Alexander Saidov wants to visualise. Among the artists who inspire Saidov are Hieronymus Bosch and Leonardo, but also Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Matthias Grünewald, Hans Rudolf Giger and Mark Ryden.

The ideas and subjects of some of the artist's paintings are rooted in childhood memories and impressions. For example, as a schoolboy, Alexander Saidov was deeply impressed by Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Mowgli.’ In particular, he was fascinated by the writer’s descriptions of an abandoned city with a ruined palace overgrown by jungle vegetation and moss. The episode from the book, in which Mowgli went to this abandoned city searching for an ‘iron tooth,’ has inspired Alexander Saidov so much that twenty years later the artist wanted to find out exactly where in India this place was located. However, it turned out that since then restoration works were made at that site, and that at present the ruins look completely different. Thus, the artist continued searching for a place that would match the images from his early memories – and he has found it in Cambodia! Without hesitation, Alexander Saidov went there to collect materials for his new painting, which, according to the artist, was supposed to take place in the 18th century.

According to the artist, the painting was supposed to depict two Europeans, a man and a woman, wondering in a fabulously beautiful exotic forest and discovering there a ruined palace in an oriental style. In the painting, the European couple is shown admiring the ruins of the palace, studying sculptures and fragments of reliefs, which depict personages from the past. The viewers would, in turn, look with interest at the eighteenth-century characters shown in the painting, as for us this period also belongs to a relatively distant past. While painting, Alexander Saidov invited sitters to assist him in the process of work. Photographs of the sitters wearing eighteenth-century costumes were taken in order to make the scene look as authentic as possible. Finding the costumes which would correspond to the period was not a problem, the clothes were rented at the local theater. However, certain difficulties occurred in the process of work; namely the man, who was the model, could not get the pose the artist needed. He was supposed to lean and examine a relief with a nude dancer through a monocle. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, and having taken many photographs, Alexander Saidov had to dress himself in eighteenth-century costume and act as a model for his own painting. Thus, the artist included his self-portrait in the painting, which allowed him to repeat the experience associated with reading his favourite book.