Oleg Vassiliev
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- For the figure skater, see Oleg Kimovich Vasiliev.
Oleg Vassiliev (born 1931 in Moscow, Russia) is a Russian painter. Vassiliev emigrated to New York in 1990 and currently lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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[edit] Education
Vassiliev graduated from V.I. Surikov State Art Institute, Moscow, in 1958. In the late 1950s he became influenced by the Russian avant-garde formalists, Vladimir Favorsky (1886-1964), Robert Falk (1886-1958), and A.V. Fonvizin (1882-1973).
[edit] Biography
From the 1950s through the 1980s, Vassiliev worked with friend and collaborator Erik Bulatov as a children's book illustrator. This "official" source of income provided the means and materials for Vassiliev to take part in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement, also known as "unofficial" or "dissident" art. Along with friends, Ilya Kabakov, Bulatov and Victor Pivavarov, Vassiliev belonged to a large group of Soviet artists that took advantage of the Khrushchev "thaw" in official policy that opened up the Soviet Union to Western culture in the years following Stalin's death in 1953.
[edit] Style
During this period of time Vassiliev developed his mature style. In his art Vassiliev combines the traditions of Russian Realism of the 19th century with the Russian avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century. "Vassiliev’s principal themes, which were born while he was in Russia and continue to the present day, are his memories of home and houses, roads, forests, fields, friends and family. Vassiliev always starts his creative process from a very personal memory, from his sacred space, the safeguarded inner center, and connects it with the visual image. Vassiliev masterfully incorporates elements from different times and spaces and arranges them throughout his paintings according to the logic and 'energetic' space of the painting."[1]
[edit] Public collections
- The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
- The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
- The State Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia
- The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia
- Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany
- Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
- The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art, New Brunswick, New Jersey
- Norsk-Russisk kultursenter, Kirkenes, Norway
- Art Museum in Murmansk, Murmansk, Russia
- Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina
- Art Musuem of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
- Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado
- Kolodzei Art Foundation, Inc., Highland Park, New Jersey
[edit] References
- ^ Natalia Kolodzei. "The Landscape of Memory and the Question of Identity," Oleg Vassiliev Memory Speaks, (Moscow: Palace Editions, 2004): 8.
- A Mosca...A Mosca... Catalogue. Olograf Editioni, Bologna, Italy, 1992, Karlsruhe, Germany, 1995.
- Baigell, Renee and Matthew Baigell. Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews After Perestroika. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1995.
- Berlin Moscow / Moscow Berlin Kunst 1950-2000. Moscow: State Tretyakov Gallery, Berlin: Martin-Gropius-Bau, 2003.
- Blomqvist. Oleg Vassiliev: Works 1987-1999 Catalogue. Oslo, Norway, 1999.
- Bown, Matthew Cullerne. Contemporary Russain Art. New York: Allied Books, 1989.
- Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde Catalogue. New York: DIA, 1998.
- Khidekel, Regina. It's the Real Thing: Soviet and Post-Soviet Sots Art and American Pop Art Catalogue. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
- Nekrasov, Vsevolod. Zhivu Vizhu (Live and See). Moscow, 2002.
- Phyllis Kind Gallery. Eric Bulatov/Oleg Vassiliev. New York, 1991.
- Tupitsyn, Margarita. Margins of Soviet Art. Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore, 1989.
