The Art: A Date With the Rain
The Artist: Leonid Afremov
About the Work:
He grew up Jewish in an anti-Semitic Soviet Russia. Was barred from associating from other Russian artists. Saw his neighbourhood and family devastated by the Chernobyl disaster. And when he finally made his way to Israel as an immigrant, his work was dismissed because of his background.
Yet Leonid Afremov’s work, based on fragments of memory or old photos, are not steeped in the darkness of these days. Instead, he captures a vibrant beauty, bursting with unparalleled colour and texture.
What adds another level of brilliance to Afremov’s work is his pairing of complex emotions with such a vivid aesthetic. A Date With the Rain, for instance, is a romanticising of the melancholy that rain inspires in many people. He goes so far as to refer to the rain as a lover to the painting’s lonely subject, imagining the raindrops that avoid the umbrella to land on her skin akin to Cupid’s arrows, piercing the loneliness of her walk.
Afremov now lives in America, and sells his work online. You can find it here.