CONCEPTUALISM IN PAINTING: ERIK BULATOV AND IVAN CHUIKOV

Russian Art from the 1960s to the 2010s: A Lecture Series by Sasha Obukhova Sasha Obukhova will discuss the lives and work of Russian artists in the broad historical context. With an encyclopedic knowledge of Russian contemporary art, art historian and Garage Archive curator Sasha Obukhova is one of the main experts in her field. Her expertise formed through the study of art history and her immediate immersion in the art scene, as well as thanks to her meticulous work as an archivist who has collected information on art events for over 30 years. Her broad perspective and attention to detail add monographic depth to every artist’s portrait, presenting them in a political, aesthetic, and institutional context. Each lecture will include a demonstration of archive materials and artworks, with the series forming the prototype for a book on Russian contemporary art. Erik Bulatov (b. 1933) was one of the founders of Sots Art. In 1959, he became an artist at children’s publisher Detgiz where he worked alongside Ilya Kabakov and Oleg Vassiliev. Children’s book illustration was his main source of income for almost 30 years. He started exhibiting his own work in Moscow in 1957 and abroad in 1973. After a series of large exhibitions, including at Centre Pompidou and Kunsthalle Zürich, in 1988 he became UNESCO’s Artist of the Year. He took part in the 1977 Biennale of Dissent in Venice and the 1988 Venice Biennale and received an award at Gwangju Biennale (1997) and the Innovation Prize (2013). He has been based between Paris and Moscow since 1991. Ivan Chuikov (1935–2020) is a representative of Moscow Conceptualism. He studied at the Moscow Secondary Art School from 1949 to 1954 and Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute from 1954 to 1960. He was a teacher at Vladivostok Art College from 1960 to 1962 and became a member of the Union of Artists of the Soviet Union in 1967. Sasha Obukhova (b. 1967, Moscow) is an art historian. She graduated from Moscow State University. In 1993 she studied at the Central European University (Prague). She has worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow), The State Tretyakov Gallery, and the National Center for Contemporary Arts. In 2000, she was a member of the working group that curated the permanent exhibition Art of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century at the Tretyakov Gallery. In 2004, she was a founding member and director of Art Projects Foundation, where she established the Archive of Russian Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Moscow.
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