Nikolai Shelekhov’s Beginner’s Guide to Icon Painting

Authors:

Pages: 343-354
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/HUYE8342

Abstract:

The article analyzes a beginner’s guide to icon painting, written by the 20th-century iconographer Nikolai Shelekhov in Germany in 1965. It contains important advice, recipes for the ancient technique of icon painting, and also moral rules concerning the iconographer. By studying the guide above, one may conclude that the author possessed great professional skills and a sense of proportion and beauty. The work gives a more complete idea of the manner and techniques of iconography, as well as of the goals set before painting the icon. “Usually, technique is given the last place, being considered a matter of some special artistic cuisine, an extremely uninteresting and boring matter. This is one of the most ossified, deep and sad misunderstandings, because the technique is not only a random way of expressing the thoughts and feelings of the artist, but often a guiding, even decisive moment in creativity” (I. E. Grabar).

Keywords:

icon painting; Nikolai Shelekhov; beginner’s guide to icon painting.

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