EMIGRE ARTIST ENJOYING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Sergei Tivetsky decided it was time to leave the Soviet Union when officials, decreeing his paintings were contaminated by “capitalistic ideas,” closed his first and last exhibition in his homeland.

That was in 1976. Four years later he arrived in New York with his wife, Oksana, and within a few months they were living in Huntington Beach. It wasn’t long, Tivetsky says, before some of his canvases were hanging in galleries in London, New York and California. A handful of his paintings are now on display indefinitely at the Anita Neal Gallery of Contemporary Art in Laguna Beach.

“It has been a wonderful change for me; I feel I can dream now,” Tivetsky said, a light accent shading his near-flawless English. “I couldn’t find my artistic self in Russia and always dreamed of coming here. These are good days for me.”

Tivetsky, 37, said he was an illustrator for government-controlled children’s books before immigrating to America. The work, although prestigious and creatively fulfilling, left an undercurrent of frustration--his drawings were subject to censorship by party chiefs who sometimes used the books to promote Communism, he said.

But Tivetsky quelled his “terrible times of depression” by painting in his spare hours. Late at night or during off days, he’d brush expressionistic, colorful landscapes, still lifes and portraits.

“I had to because that was where my real joy in art was,” he explained.

In 1976, he decided to gamble and mount a public showing. After wrangling with government authorities, Tivetsky was allowed to exhibit in a room of Moscow’s Institute of Science building. Tivetsky said he had the usual expectations as the opening neared; like most artists, he wanted his work to create a stir. But he wasn’t prepared for the resulting commotion.

The exhibit was closed two days after a government critic labeled his paintings “capitalistic,” Tivetsky said.

“If you are a dedicated artist, there is trouble,” he said. “They wanted me to do the illustrations and not the paintings. I knew I had to escape.”

Tivetsky and his wife applied to immigrate to the United States but were stalled by bureaucratic tie-ups. His brother, Aleksei, who had married a U.S. citizen and settled in Huntington Beach years before, offered to sponsor the couple, but Tivetsky was told to wait until there was an opening.

In the meantime, he focused on his after-hours painting. Tivetsky also organized a small underground group of artists who met regularly at his home to show their work and discuss art principles and history.

Each year he tried to immigrate, but it wasn’t until the eve of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow that leaving seemed possible. The usually cool relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union warmed somewhat in preparation for the Olympics. Immigration rules were temporarily relaxed and the couple were allowed to enter the United States, Tivetsky recalled.

The timing was fortuitous: The couple’s papers were processed just weeks before former President Jimmy Carter, reacting to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, ordered a U.S. boycott of the games.

“I was lucky. I may not have been able to get out. I’m sure both countries would have been less responsive” after the boycott, Tivetsky said.

Since arriving in Huntington Beach, Tivetsky has worked at improving his style, which he says is influenced by Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. There also are clear strains of Paul Cezanne, Maurice Utrillo and Claude Monet running through his bold canvases.

Tivetsky, whose formal studies centered at Moscow’s Institute of Art, looks back with chagrin on the official critic who saw capitalistic overtones in his paintings, which reflect the artist’s love of nature. Tivetsky considers himself apolitical.

“I always tried to escape politics (in the Soviet Union) because the ideology was pushed at you so much,” he explained. “But I never considered turning to any other ideology; I feel separate from all ideology.”

Still, he concedes that his status as a Russian expatriate has left him something of a political symbol. He is associated with other artists and performers who have fled Eastern Europe, and his work, like theirs, may be identified with creative freedom, Tivetsky said.

In fact, one of his first showings in this country was at Stanford University in 1981. He was part of a group exhibition titled “East European Art in Exile,” which featured progressive artists from the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria and other nations.

Tivetsky said the show was a success because of the art’s quality and spirit.

“The artists showed they had their own point of view, that they could make their own choices about their art.”