Michail Schnittmann received an excellent education at the Art College of Odessa (Ukraine) and the Academy of Arts Tiflis (Georgia). During the last thirty years he has worked and played a rich variation on the keyboard of the picturesque form repertoire.
Michail Schnittmann is a confessed, experienced artist, who has found long ago his manuscript, his style and his subjects. What is fascinating and also impressing in his achievements of works is that his style does not become stiff or firm when suddenly - quite different colours give new subjects an altered Malduktus.
Michail Schnittmann is a fine, alert observer; no voyeur, rather an onlooker finding and forming something out of snapshots, from apparently accidentally unimportant pictures.
We can see thanks to the work of the artist, to his consciousness something what we would never see so probably what would remain unnoticed.
And because we are only accidental witnesses, passing, we cannot disturb in the pictures shown. They are natural, harmonious, and proud. The open, natural originates thanks to the special painting manner which Michail Schnittmann practises. Some his pictures appear in the immediate sense as blurred. The applied coats of paint become careful and, nevertheless, energetically again wiped away. Because this happens in the level, from the right to the left, more seldom also from the left to the right, an astonishing movement originates. Do we drive, or run past the shown? Are they on the move? We do not know it exactly. But we see that nothing is static. Only the artist is able in his pictures to captivate what has already changed at the next moment and is the past. Otherwise identified and nevertheless, similarly in the openness of his latest work, the "Pigeons", dynamically on the way-picture. They seem quite graceful and light-handed not only in the motives, also in the painting manner. To the place of a rather earthy, from red tones and brown tone dominated painting, to the place where energetically again would be wiped away to give an outworn light blue tone painting. In the flooded light, the coexistence of the spots of colour a breath of impressionism is perceptible. However, the dynamic, is openly reached by the frame of picture, the inclined lines of the city railroad compartment, the unsuspected almost stepping out of single people from the picture, thus with the "Pigeons". The person is with Michail Schnittmann - no matter whether a contemporary, prophetic figure or historical personality - always embodiment as something significant, important. He is a symbol for Position. Over a period of five years, between 2004 and 2008, resulted works in different colourfulness and Duktus, the picturesque has increased the nuances are more varied, more igneous. Only selective working out of the bodies, the form-giving linearity, and the powerful colour order is common to the works. The pictures are - Delacroix to be cited - "A feast to the eyes" Michail's Schnittmann works are concrete, but they can be also figurative to abstract. To scoop from the fullness of the form repertoire, is a basic principle of the artistic freedom of Michail Schnittmann. Therefore, his aesthetic estimate can be determined as postal-modern which offers different and even contradictory approaches for him. The quiet question reveals itself for Schnittmann as means for the purpose, but not as a definition of his artistic creating. His work asks questions and ushers you into the world of thought and considerations of the artist. Nevertheless, easy answers do not present themselves. Therefore, an examining look protrudes in a judgemental manner out of some pictures, critically as a self-portrait of the artist. It ushers optically into his work and opens a mental reflecting space which must be selected. Thus the picture didactics of the artist from the quick movements of the public subjects and pictures hail very concisely. Michail Schnittmann invests in his works rather conceptual experiments which owe themselves often to a mounting principle.
Thus contradictory is combined with each other and brought in as a connection. But also many stories being inherent breaks are to the artist a continual incentive for his works. Although the conceptual aesthetics Schnittmann allows expecting a rational access to the pedagogic art, the chance in his creating, plays a big role. Often these are short moments, visual experiences which can inspire a subject and release the artistic working process. Also usual press photographs give impulses for a new work. Then it is a matter of filtering out the core concealed in the picture association. Thus Michail Schnittmann retains integrity a basic openness which itself can discover a picture in the colour mixture of the palette in his artistic creating, and in it he has discovered one of his creation principles: his palette is often a canvas, his palette becomes the picture, and in his pictures impressions, questions and optical associations mix. To the painter it is important to make clear single forms, to let them, however, partially in secrecy, so that they complete themselves only in the head of the viewer. The working process with Schnittmann is complicated and differently in the execution. In total a sketchy impression arises where nothing is pressed in a final form. Here everything develops from the moment which is unique and unrepeatable or in other words: the pictures bring the action of the creative inspiration understandably. Everything is in becoming or in the crossing to complete itself only in the perception of the viewer.