From his native Russia, Volodia has retained all the characteristics of contemporary painting and the richness of inspiration; but he has also successfully integrated into the Western world, where he now lives, and blended Into his art some of our present features. His paintings, which are always large-sized, take us into his inner daydreams, And his inner daydreams give us a somewhat surrealistic impression of his personal universe, Whether one looks at his still-lifes or his portraits of women, nothing looks conventional. He breathes into his figures a sense of unreality which make us leave this world for a kind of fairy tale. These women - his wife probably, as they have so many common features -resemble rangy nymphs who are at the same time smooth, mysterious and secretive with their soft iridescent skins and their strange eyes; they seem to be staring at you and looking elsewhere at the same time, perhaps beyond or into the depths of themselves, He makes them take surrealistic poses not unlike those of classical ballet dancers or yogis, but is careful to huddle them in the heart of giant flowers which offer a shelter to their nakedness. In their modesty - although they are naked - they prefer to don a transparent veil or a garment of lush flowers. What is striking in Volodia Popov's paintings is the sense of linearity in the outlines, and the range of colours he uses. Faithful to the richness of the traditional Russian colours which recur in all his compositions, he applies them onto backgrounds enhanced with reliefs which convey onto them a shimmering appearance conjuring up the fabrics and brocades of the past. As for his still-lifes, so much happens in them that they are truly enrapturing.

 

We are miles away from the rows of objects and the sophisticated static compositions which make up the traditional corpus of the genre. With Volodia - for that is how he signs his paintings - a still-life is like a gathering of friends around a table, holding glasses and drinking toasts to everything under the sun. His unbridled imagination combined with the definite influence of Russian folk-tales transform each piece into a distinctive character taking part in this friendly gathering. The flasks, rangy like his women, slender-necked and graced with reed-like undulating figures, look as though they are engaged in an endless chat. Teapots are undoubtedly inhabited with a genie which makes them dance on the table. All the items of the backdrop of the table are animated, distorted and seen as in a hallucination: they undulate, strut about and never cease to put on airs and graces with one another. The table itself wanders away from trivial reality, with its vertical top richly clad with heavy gold-embroidered material, unless it is a flying carpet ready to take its passengers into a new world -a fantasy world where objects talk and have a life or their own. Volodia Popov has succeeded into translating on the canvas what others had represented in the magical literature of folk-tales. This artist takes us on a journey into a poetical world which is richly coloured, and it is nod indeed a coincidence if collectors all over the world are so fond of his pictures.