In situ art

Painted ‘carpets’ (naïve paintings on canvas usually fixed on walls near beds) originated in the late 19th and early 20th century at the junction of mass and folk cultures.

Urban painters, who produced shop signboards, decorated interiors in photographer’s studios, barber’s shops, saunas and canteens in small towns, were directly responsible for the emergence of the painted carpet as a genre. They simplified the topics of classical paintings, merged them with original forms and patterns, traditional in folk art, thus introducing new meanings.

Yazep Drazdovich (1888–1954), an artist and teacher, became a wanderer, knowingly choosing the genre of the painted carpet for the aesthetic education of peasants. Carpets painted by Alena Kish (1896–1949) are masterpieces of in situ art. She had no special artistic education but her works with original stories which combine decorative ornamental and narrative painting put her in line with the world-known in situ artists.

The carpets painted by Y. Drazdovich and A. Kish are the examples of a meeting and reciprocal penetration of high and folk arts. The meeting was possible because Modern (Art Nouveau) acquired from Romanticism the interest in folklore. Modern promoted the discovery of in situ (naïve) art which corresponded to the post-impressionist tendencies in European art and became an independent trend in the culture of the 20th century.