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Russian artist's mural captures mythical Montana cattle drive
August 27, 2008
Editor@montanaliving.com
The mythic American West has always cast a wide net, capturing the imagination of the world with its indelible images of mountains and plains, cowboys and Indians, six-guns and barbed wire.
To Russian artist Anatoly Kalashnikov, nothing symbolizes the western experience as precisely as a Montana cattle drive, with its emphasis on movement and seasonal ritual. Kalashnikov, a listed and well-represented museum artist in his homeland, has created a one-hundred-meter mural that places America’s greater heritage within the context of this prevailing cultural symbol. The title of the painting is “Montana, Cattle Drive.”
“Mr. Kalashnikov wanted it to be the kind of mural where images from the 1960s can blend with images from the 1890s,” says Mark Kelner, Kalashnikov’s American translator. “You can only really understand it when it’s big.”
The painting is currently in six panels, with each panel standing seven feet tall and ten feet wide. Images of a traditional cattle drive are juxtaposed with other American icons and events: the Statue of Liberty, the Civil War, a pantheon of presidents and Warhol’s pop-shock Marilyn Monroe.
In some ways, Montana is a natural subject for the painter. “He lives in the Ural Mountains, on the border between Europe and Asia, so he understands space,” says Kelner. “It’s a very remote part of Russia.”
Kalashnikov hopes to find a permanent home for the mural in the state of Montana, and has enlisted senators Burns and Baucus to assist in finding a suitable location. Because of the mural’s size, space is a limiting factor; Kelner is currently in the process of seeking out an airport or other large building that might accommodate the piece.
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