BORIS LEIFER – Still Life

by The Editors of Art Market April 24, 2019

BORIS LEIFER – Still Life

Boris Leifer. Article on Art Market Magazine. The GOLD LIST Special Edition #4. Top Contemporary Artists of Today!

Boris Leifer was born in Ukraine in 1946.
Boris Leifer is a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of the Arts, an academy known for its firm attachment to teaching the European – traditional – realistic style of painting. After completing his studies at the Academy, Leifer also specialized in stage design for the Russian theatre. His Academy studies, along with his involvement in theatre design, explain his tendency as an artist to create a “staged” composition in his works. In this genre of his art, we find motifs relating to life and death.
Leifer’s still lives are staged paintings, representing a kind of miniature stage. It is the artist who chooses, sets down, and arranges the different objects on various surfaces (table, shelf) as he sees fit. These paintings contain no human figures or panoramic landscapes. The objects on display reflect a selected reality, even if partial, of everyday human existence.

Boris Leifer. Self Portrait. Oil on Canvas. 46x50.5 cm. 2017

Boris Leifer. Self Portrait. Oil on Canvas. 46×50.5 cm. 2017

The way the subject is painted indicates a high level of skill in the depiction of textures, with the accent on the light falling on them – to which the artist attributes great importance.
A person observing Leifer’s paintings in this genre takes a close-up, zoom-in view,
a view that creates a sense of intimacy towards the objects depicted.
The angle of observation in Leifer’s still life paintings is the same frontal, traditional angle of observation that can already be seen in the still life paintings of ancient Pompeii, in the still lives of Michelangelo Caravaggio in the 16th century, and in the works of the Flemish and Dutch painters of the 16th to 18th century. The group of objects is seen in its entirety, with the interplay of light and shadow created by the artist giving the paintings volume and perspective. The still life depiction of ripe fruit, vegetables and different types of food in the art of the 16th to 18th century was a criticism of the excessive consumption of food, signifying the sin of gluttony and the emptiness attributed to Vanitas, which in Christianity stood in contrast to the poverty of the family of Jesus, and the quality of mercy and generosity to others of his mother.
The fruit and vegetables at the height of their beauty, without flaw or blemish, as depicted in Leifer’s paintings, project eternality. Real fruit, vegetables, bread, and fish are far from being eternal, and like all living organisms, they are doomed to exist for a limited, finite period of time. As a result of the probing, sharp, and direct gaze of the artist, the animate is manifested in the object, and in burst of human creativity, it is brought to life.
– Orna Fichman,
Raanana Municipality curator