Alexey Yavlinsky: Seriality as an Artistic Method

The subject of the research is the serial method in the work of Alexei Yavlensky based on the materials of the cycles: "Variations," "Mystical Heads," "Faces of the Savior," "Abstract Heads," and "Meditations." This work traces the sequential transformation of the same motif from a landscape impression to a human face and then to a highly generalized image. Special attention is given to the repeated reference to the discovered form, where each new work becomes another stage in its further development. It analyzes how the degree of synthesis, the nature of composition, the relationship of color masses, and the role of pictorial texture change from cycle to cycle. "Meditations" are regarded as a late stage in this process, in which the human face acquires a generalized and sacred character. The connection between the serial practice and the understanding of color as the main means of expressing inner content is revealed. The study employs formal-stylistic, comparative-typological, and iconological methods. With their help, works from different cycles are compared, stable and changing elements of the plastic structure are identified, and the development of the serial principle is recorded. The conducted analysis shows that seriality for Yavlensky is not just a technique allowing for the unification of several works around a single motif, but rather a method of creative thinking. The scientific novelty lies in substantiating the role of seriality in the formation of Yavlensky's method. Unlike the approach that considers cycles in isolation, here, their internal continuity and the general working principle of the artist with the image are traced. This allows for establishing how the solutions found in the landscape "Variations" continue in portrait painting, and how the nature of this process changes in subsequent series. As a result, seriality appears not as a formal means of unifying works, but as the foundation of a long artistic search that maintains unity amid changes in form, typification, and expressive means.