Vladimir Veisberg did not consider himself a draftsman, he never kept a register of graphic works, but drawing was present in his work throughout his life. After the period of the 1940s — 1950s, when the young Weisberg mastered the virtuoso, mainly portrait drawing of the Mashkov school and then moved away from it, it is difficult to find an artist among his contemporaries who would demonstrate to a greater extent that drawing is an independent art form. As such, the drawing has occupied a place in Weisberg’s work since the early 1960s. At this time, the artist teaches in the studio of the Institute of Advanced Training of the Union of Architects of the USSR (1959-1984), and the drawing becomes a successful pedagogical aid. Weisberg’s drawings of the 1960s are distinguished by a variety in the choice of motif and material. Trying different techniques, the artist sought to identify the vector of his inclinations, to understand that he was “on hand”. Since the 1960s, the main genres of Weisberg’s graphics have been nudity and landscape.
The exhibition catalog includes drawings by Weisberg from the 1940s to the 1980s from two private collections and five watercolors from the collection of Inna Bazhenova. The exhibition mainly presented the main genres of Weisberg’s graphics — nude and landscape, able to demonstrate that drawing and watercolor for this artist are not preparatory stages for a “more serious”, for example, painting, work, but independent types of art.
Weisberg’s graphics are a search for the boundaries of art, the study of its materials and the determination of one’s own abilities. For an artist, this is an opportunity to look at his painting from the outside and analyze different forms of his own perception of space.
