The one, who regularly tells nonsense about the art of dying,
should take a look at the pictures painted by Robert Hettich.
You will feel at once the living energy being emitted by modern art.

Robert Hettich was born in 1964 in the German family in the former Soviet Tadjik Republic. At school he studied music and painting. After doing military service he studied in the Art College in the town Leninabad. He learned a lot about different applied arts and technology, - things that had been forgotten in the West for a long time. We tried little by little to get rid of the amateurishness in Art Colleges in the last years. Instead of discussions we studied the basis of painting.

At the beginning of his studies the student Hettich had a big palette in his schedule: from Rubens till Rembrandt, later anatomy and act drawings. Hettich’s works prove his skills in the technology of painting.

In 1988 Robert Hettich and his family left their country for the West. Thanks to his classical education and his numerous works Robert entered the third term at once to continue his education at the Art College. He moved up to Drawing and Design Department and then got a second Degree of Drawing and Design.

He worked as a graphic artist and designer and found out that his soul still belonged to painting, when an artist uses traditional ways to express the real life. Devotion to traditions of impressionists and expressionists are recognized in his works. Why not?

Development of individual style without copying of some well-known ideal – that is the real art. Look at the series of pictures “Moments” by Robert Hettich to make sure yourself.

His view of the modern artist differs Hettich’s art from the art of great masters of 19th and 20th centuries. This view has another temperature and other temperament, other mentality and nature comparing with the predecessors. The world has changed and the people too, - that is the reason. The way Hettich paints people and how they look reminds us about the art of German impressionists - Corint, Stefogt and Libermann,, but something is different. We don’t see the arrogant and proud models at the picture, but we only see a faceless and a flat crowd. By the way, you can not see the distinct faces anywhere in the pictures by Hettich.

Thus the artist conveys the spirit of our time and confirms the famous words of Arthur Rimbaud who insisted that an artist should be modern. Hettich’s contemporaneity lies in his pictures’ language, which leads to entirely new contents.

Hettich’s characters are not connected with the reality all of a sudden as by impressionists. Hettich doesn’t commemorate the impressions gathered in the air on canvas. Impressions conveyed are rather connected with psychogenesis. It deals with the state of soul. That is why there are no local colors but there are symbolic colors. Hettich paints his characters from the series pictures „ Moments “ in warm red and orange or in cold blue and green or in both colors at once. This color neighborhood makes the temperature of the pictures. Hettich doesn’t use less plastic art by working with light and dark colors. It reminds us the famous social diagnosis by Bertold Brecht’s „Three-penny opera“, which is actual even today: “Some people are in the shade, the other ones are in the light. The ones, who are in the light, are visible, the others, who are in the shade, are hidden.“ Hettich’s pictures “Moments” not only about loss of individuality or warmth and coldness of peoples’ relations, not only about tops and bottoms of a society.

Robert Hetiich’s pictures are the colored guides to the modern problem of realizing the life.

The audience is impressed by the frequency of white spots and areas at the Hettich’s pictures. For example, at his paintings “In the Middle” and his triptych “The Time”. White spots are like terra incognita of the picture, like silent moments of our learning the reality. They are also like empty places in some text or pauses in the conversation. There could be no information without them.

On the other side, you can see a totally different world as the pictures with horses. It seems Hettich enjoys the scope of demonstration and revel in representation. This exhilaration commemorates the stormy power of animals’ movement during the process of painting. Hasty touches of the brush create the pictures of Polo game.

Image impressionism changes to impressionism of feelings. Both art of movement and description compose the great power of the picture. Stormy energy of Polo game finds expression in the living language of the picture. Besides, every touch of the brush has been made perfectly, with a lot of concentration and for sureness.

Hettich’s pictures speak about people. They follow the 2000-year old truth of Aristotle, that is still actual: art should look into people’s fortunes.