Eduard Klebanov

The first Picture I drew in 2003 after declaring bankruptcy of my “Russian Bookseller Outlet” Store. The Panorama of memory of St. Petersburg was drawn from complete memory! I had been left unemployed for more than a year and took to art which shocked all my relatives and my household. From sheer memory and using simple paper and colored pencils without mistake or an eraser, I depicted a panorama of the Hermitage and parts of St. Petersburg depicting the whole history of my hectic life surrounding those places. Later I found in an album of a book a photograph that accurately conveys my memory. In the picture are six episodes; from how my mother and father brought me to the Hermitage for the first time, to how I brought all my wives and children there.

When a friend Igor Tyulpanov, looked through my entire website and albums of my art he told me “I was an unsurpassed master of writing with painter with colored pencils.” I was convinced of his words after looking upon what I had painted, the first picture in my life. I began to write a book about my life and continued to draw on the four sheets of plain writing paper with colored pencils the "Panorama of memory of St. Petersburg, the Palace and Vasilevskiy Island.”

My friends and family had thought I went crazy but really two events pushed me to create this work, rather two stories. During the 1937 election when my parents met, (where my father was the Chairman of the Electoral Commission from Minsk and my mother, an active member of the Komsomol, was a member of this election commission in the factory in Belarusia). Two weeks later, dad came to mom's parents and asked for her hand in marriage. They immediately though a wedding which my mother was not present, ( she was to ashamed to ask for three days off). The second inspiration for creating this "masterpiece" was a copy from the pictures by Grisha Bruskin "All People came on Elections”. By seeing this picture I began to formulate the plot and continue expanding on my art. When this "masterpiece" was completed, I found in the remains of the last few books from my crushed store the Album "History of the Construction of the Hermitage" to which my surprise so accurately portrayed my art drawn from memory.

At the retired age of 69 and a half, during my time visiting my daughter and grandchildren in New Hampshire I started drawing my next piece. While they slept upstairs, I began to draw again from memory and looking onto the view outside. At the age of 69.5, retired, took up a brush and a pencil, and created it in almost a year my next 25 pieces!

Eduard Klebanov was born on January 25, 1949 in the City of Vsevolozhsk, Leningrad. He was a graduate of the Leningrad Electrical Communications Engineering Institute named after professor M.A.Bonch-Bruevich. Klebanov’s only exposure to art at the time was taking the class ‘Basics of Art Design & Radio for Electronic Equipment’ with the focus on ‘The Basic Principal of Art Constructivism and the Principal of Art Design Radio-Electronic Apparatus (Graduate Department of the Institute of Technical Aesthetics). He graduated from the institute and as his final work wrote a paper on “Magnetic-Record Block of First Class” which was given an academic score of ‘Excellency’ He attended a lecture course on the Theory of Art History at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute at the Department of Art Graphics and Painting under the guidance of the prominent historian of the theory of Arts Michael U. German. On August 19th, 1992 Eduard moved to Boston and from October 1996- February 2001 he owned a Russian Bookstore and Art Gallery. From February 2010 to March 2018 he was the owner of a photo souvenir art kiosk at the Arsenal Mall in Watertown Massachusetts where he took pictures and edited them to be placed on souvenirs for the shoppers of the mall. He began drawing the view from his window, then the interior of his apartment; “Mishin Park” in acrylic, oil and watercolors. Viewing the world like a frog 365 degrees. The scenes from his head his thoughts and feelings of the world replicated in his art. Works like, “Boston College inverted perspective, Halloween in Brookline” a lot of people drawn strange projections of homes not quite where they belong. In February 2019, he went to NY, climbed to the 102nd floor of the Freedom Tower and the new saw the underground Museum. The idea to draw his autobiography through geography to depict his life in the USA through a NY lens. “Panorama of Remembrance 2”, will be forward # 26 - “Panorama of Remembrance 3, Boston and I” all art drawn 3 in a row! There was no such are depicted like this in the history of painting. The closest was Small Dutch, Flemish, Matisse and Van Gogh. Eduard says “I have a lot of things in small spaces with a lot of them in the interior”. From there, this Still Life Collection of the Interior was my muse. Since July 2018 there are 25 total paintings which has absorbed life at the age of 70.