Kanevsy and Animals: Bears

 

Animals were painted and sculpted from the beginning of art history. Peter Paul Rubens may have been the foremost painter who depicted wild animals as seen in his "hunt" series impregnated with tigers, boars, hippos, crocs, foxes, etc (no bears) centered at "Daniel in the Lion's Den", giant eagle in the "Prometheus Bound", animals painted mostly by Snyders, not Rubens himself; continuing in sculpture with dynamic and plastic lions in Milan's Piazza Duomo and, alack, stiff lions at London's Trafalgar Square leading the rest of the world.

 Alexander Kanevsky in the late 20th and the 21st century within his giant metamorphotic, transcendental, and allegorical visions offers us remarkable number of symbolic but naturally rendered animal figures, centered at lions (i.e. “Africa"), tigers (i.e. “India”), and, like no one before him, big brown bears (i.e. “Four Rivers”, “Evolution”, “Antonina”, “Zenobia”, “David”, etc).

Alexander Kanevsky painting "Africa" (2004, oil on wood, 310 x 366 cm)

Rubens "Daniel in the Lion's Den"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21KohZSt2tw