Flaunting Szafki: a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Yusef Szafki will be on show in the Viewing Balcony of Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh from Monday 26 September to Saturday 29 October 2022.
Scottish painter Yusef Szafki (1950–2021) produced his colourful and enigmatic canvases over several decades, and was notably influenced by mid-twentieth century Abstract Expressionism. This retrospective is the first exhibition to attempt a survey of his life’s work. As such it gives an overview of his experimentation and his ever-developing concerns with form, tone and texture. The exuberance and the humour in his oeuvre is best appreciated in such a broad cross-section. This allows themes, long-term intentions and even obsessions to be followed at length, exploring how Szafki overturns and refashions them over time with sudden and unexpected changes in methods and materials.
Born and raised in Glasgow as the only child of a Russian émigré, Szafki was heavily influenced by literature in his visual art. In an endlessly creative life, he published two literary works, including one on engaging with the Russian/Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol (60 Degrees N. (Diary of a Madman), 1996). Arguably the bold, dreamlike, exaggerated style of Szafki’s work is influenced heavily by the personality of Gogol and his writing in such stories as ‘Diary of a Madman’ and ‘The Nose’. The title of this exhibition – Flaunting Szafki – draws on one of the pieces Szafki published in his own collection of stories Helsinki (Not the Town), 1995, and it encapsulates something of the boldness and joie-de-vivre seen in the themes and subject matter of his paintings.
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