Sergei Chepik, “Procession (Fantasy March),” 1991

Mixed media, predominantly oil paints, on canvas.

Signed in Cyrillic and dated at lower right

39 3/4 x 39 3/4 in. (100 x 100 cm)

Inv. no. ab_31540

“Procession (Fantasy March)” (1991) by painter Sergei Chepik (1953–2011) unites important streams of this émigré artist’s career. Chepik was born in Kyiv to painter Mikhail (Mykhailo) Chepik and sculptor Lyudmila Sabanayeva, both members of the Soviet Artists Union. Already in his earliest years, his childhood reflected the complexities facing Soviet artists. While both parents created art which hewed to official parameters for both style and subject, they also chose to have him quietly baptized.

After graduating the prestigious Repin Institute of Arts (now the Academy of Arts) with honors, Chepik took an unusual path. In January 1979, he was given access to a state facility housing and caring for those suffering with mental illness, cognitive disabilities, addiction, and despair. The drawings he made over three months served as the basis for his painting “House of the Dead” (1979–1987). The scene of the tormented, disheveled inmates in a crumbling former chapel – seemingly a comment on the fate of both religious faith and citizens in the Soviet era – was immediately banned from exhibition. Chepik suffered a similar fate. The government controlled access to art supplies and, having fallen out of favor, he could not easily secure the basic materials required for his work. In the face of these difficulties, he chose exile in France, leaving with the help of Marie-Aude Albert, an art historian whom he later married.

“Procession” was completed in 1991, when Chepik had already been in Paris for several years. Throughout his career, he had painted a number of phantasmagoric, occasionally allegorical, scenes filled with multiple, often grotesque, and costumed figures in compositions drawing from the European traditions. In the painting we see a Quixote-esque figure leading a procession made up of fools, clowns, the deluded, and the tormented. Paris’s Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, a monument of Chepik’s adopted home, rises on an illuminated hill in the background. Is this group stumbling toward this light or are they simply passing it on their journey?

Provenance:

Collection of the artist

Roy Miles Gallery, London

Private Collection, UK