Marlen Spindler

Portrait of Marlen Spindler

Marlen Pawlowitsch Spindler ( Russian Марлен Павлович Шпиндлер ; born March 15, 1931 in Karakol ; † May 18, 2003 in Kraskowo ) was a Russian nonconformist .

In Russia itself, like the other nonconformists, he is generally little known. Marlen Spindler was honored with an exhibition in the renowned Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 1996 , and his pictures are now also hanging in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg - but Spindler, sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and exile in the Soviet Union for being parasitic, is abroad more recognized than in Russia.

Childhood in the Central Asian "magic land"

Marlen Spindler was born on March 15, 1931 in the Kyrgyz town of Karakol , around 150 kilometers from the Chinese border. The Jewish father and the Russian Orthodox mother had to secretly marry for religious reasons and therefore baptized the son of their “mixed marriage” after the atheists Marx and Lenin. So Mar-Len is not a female first name, but a suitcase word from Marx and Lenin .

In 1932 the family moved to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic , first to the city of Samarkand , then to Tashkent , and then on to Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan . Marlen Spindler's childhood in the Central Asian Soviet Union - in his words a magical land with minarets and bazaars in the cities, with wild horses and camels in wide steppes - was a great inspiration for his painting throughout his life.

In 1941 the family moved six time zones west from Central Asia to a small wooden house in the Moscow suburb of Kraskowo . Marlen Spindler was trained there from 1947 to 1950 at the state art school at the Mosfilm studios.

Early influences

From 1951 to 1954, the young artist had to do military service in a barracks in the Vladimir region . Because Spindler painted all prohibitions defiance at every opportunity, he sat over 200 days of his three-year service in the arrest . That didn't stop him from leaving the troupe at every opportunity and painting the Uspensky Cathedral in Vladimir or the Church of the Protection and Intercession of the Virgin Mary in Bogolyubowo, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

With his miserable military clearance certificate, Marlen Spindler had no chance of a place at the art academy. He therefore had to work in the Moscow graphic arts combine "Promgrafik" until 1968, where he very successfully designed over 200 logos for industrial products. Through the essential reduction of the socialist trademarks he found abstraction in his art.

An important influence for Spindler was the famous frescoes and icons by Andrei Rublev in the Uspensky Cathedral , which he knew from his military service. Marlen Spindler traveled to Vladimir again and again to look at the old Russian icons: “I loved them very much and kept seeing the originals. All of this ran into my blood so much that I sometimes think I painted them myself. "

Marlen Spindler did not adhere to the state directive of socialist realism . He painted wild horses and orthodox crosses, played with light and shadow between the representational and the abstract, mixed his earthy tones and powdery pastels even from natural colors instead of using the specified striking colors.

Behind bars

The state punished him for his non-conformist art with the release from the "Promgrafik". This punishment, perceived as unjust, reinforced Marlen Spindler's quick-tempered character, drunkenness and assault came on top of that - the result was a total of 15 years in prison and exile away from his family.

But even behind bars Marlen Spindler painted. With sometimes adventurous mixed media, depending on which colors he was able to find, he brought gloomy scenes onto wrapping paper or tattered sheets: a prisoner licking his spoon, prisoners playing dominoes or the skinny cat in the penal camp.

Many of his works behind bars were discovered and burned by the prison guards. His wife was able to smuggle pictures of Marlen Spindler out of prison hidden under her skirts.

Painting in freedom

It was not until 1989, with the advent of perestroika , that Marlen Spindler was pardoned and released from prison. In his newly won freedom he could only paint a few pictures, but the years behind bars took their toll: in 1994 and 1997 he suffered a stroke. His father Pavel Lvovich had died of this in 1962 and his brother Yuri died of the same disease in 2002. Paralysis tied the athletic man to the bed "like a defeated giant".

Since Marlen Spindler could never sell his banned pictures, he had his entire life's work at home. He stored them on tables and homemade shelves, hid them under the bed or in intermediate floors. In 1996 his parents' house in Kraskowo burned down - only two months earlier his life's work had been brought to Moscow to protect the pictures from the high humidity in the old wooden house.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• 1991 Moscow. Aerostar Hotel
• 1993 Moscow. Contemporary Art Center (Studio 20 Gallery)
• 1994 Moscow. Contemporary Art Center (Studio 20 Gallery). Graphic works Moscow. The International Federation of Artists
• 1996 Moscow. Tretyakov Gallery
• 2006 Zurich. Nadja Brykina Gallery . Retrospective
• 2010 Zurich. Nadja Brykina Gallery . Retrospective on the occasion of the book trilogy about Marlen Spindler's life journey between captivity and freedom (see literature )

Group exhibitions

• 1958 Moscow. The fourth exhibition of young Moscow artists
• 1962 Moscow. Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya (today Alexandra Solzhenitsyna Street in the Taganski district ). Exhibition of works by artists belonging to E. Belyutin's Studio
• 1975 Moscow. Preliminary reviews in private flats prior to the All-Union Exhibition
• 1975 Moscow. Exhibiton of Young Artists at the “House of Culture” - in the USSR. Exhibition of Economic Achievement
• 1976 Moscow. Spring exhibitions in private flats (M. Odnoralov's studio)
• 1987 Moscow. Hermitage Park. “A Retrospective of Moscow. Artists' Works of 1957-87 ”
• 1988 Moscow. The Central House of Artists. Graphic works of Moscow Artists
• 1989 Helsinki. The House of Soviet Science and Culture "Collection - 89"
• 1990 Moscow. Tretyakov Gallery . "The Other Art"
• 1990 Tampere. Museum of Arts. "Treasures in the Dirt"
• 1991 Moscow. The Palace of Youth. "The Logic of Paradoxes"
• 1991 Moscow. The Central House of Artists. "The Golden Brush"
• 1993 Moscow. Tretyakov Gallery. "Postmodern Art and National Traditions"
• 1996 Moscow. Tretyakov Gallery. “Non-conformists - the Second Russian Avant-garde 1955-1988. From Bar-Ger's Collection ”

In 1997 Russian television broadcast a documentary by TV journalist Nadja Brykina about the life and work of Marlen Spindler, who died in Kraskovo in 2003.

Number of his works, collections in museums

• Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow
• Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
• Nadja Brykina Gallery in Zurich (estate administrator)

family

Marlen Spindler first married the painter Valentina Lapschina in 1956, two years later their son Nikolaj (Kolja) was born. In 1965 he married the artist Lydia Tokarewa for the second time, and their daughter Mascha was born a year later.

literature

• 

  Monograph of the most important works

• 

  Travel across the old country

• 

  Behind bars

• 

  Painting in freedom

• 

  Catalog and CV

• Marlen Spindler. Monograph. Ed .: Nadja Brykina. Contributions: Nadja Brykina, Urs Häner, Natalia Alexandrova, Stanislaw Iwanitzki and Juri Tamoiko. 1999: M, N & O Art Publishing Co. Ltd, German / English, Russian / French, ISBN 5-85275-134-0 (monograph on the life and work of the artist following the first exhibition of his works in the Tretyakov Gallery and the corresponding catalog from 1996)
• Marlen Spindler. Catalog. Ed .: Nadja Brykina. Contributions: Nadja Brykina, Urs Häner. 2005: Nadja Brykina Gallery AG. German / English: ISBN 3-033-00360-5 ; Russian / French: ISBN 3-033-00361-3
• Marlen Spindler. Volume I - Journey across the old country. Editor and author: Nadja Brykina. 2009: Nadja Brykina Editions, German / French: ISBN 978-3-9523523-1-1 ; Russian / English: ISBN 978-3-9523523-0-4
• Marlen Spindler. Volume II - Behind Bars. Editor and author: Nadja Brykina. 2009: Nadja Brykina Editions. German / French: ISBN 978-3-9523523-3-5 , Russian / English: ISBN 978-3-9523523-0-4
• Marlen Spindler. Volume III - Painting in Freedom. Editor and author: Nadja Brykina. 2009: Nadja Brykina Editions. German / French: ISBN 978-3-9523523-5-9 , Russian / English: ISBN 978-3-9523523-4-2
• Boris Raev: Špindler, Marlen Pavlovič . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 105, de Gruyter, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11-023271-4 , p. 293 f.

Web links

• Art: Moscow – Zurich by Brigitte Ulmer , balance sheet, May 23, 2006
• Literature by and about Marlen Spindler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Marlen Spindler at artfacts.net (wrong gender, Marlen is not a female first name in Russia)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leoni Hof: The Russian soul . Bolero. March 11, 2010. Archived from the original on April 1, 2010. Retrieved on March 13, 2010.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Philipp Meier: The stubborn soul of Russia - Marlen Spindler . The New Zurich Times. March 25, 2006. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Jürg Vollmer: Marlen Spindler: A Russian nonconformist in the Nadja Brykina Gallery . maiak - The Newsroom of Eastern Europe. March 12, 2010. Archived from the original on June 5, 2011. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 13, 2010. 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Nadja Brykina: Marlen Spindler: Excerpts from the book trilogy . Marlen Spindler: Excerpts from the book trilogy. March 11, 2010. Archived from the original on November 9, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 13, 2010.