Mikhail CHEMIAKIN (1943) - Lot 73

Mikhail CHEMIAKIN (1943) Metaphysical Head 1984 Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, titled and dated on reverse. Dim. H. 113 L. 83 cm. Mikhail Shemyakin (b. 1943, Moscow) is a major figure in Soviet non-conformist art. A multidisciplinary artist - painter, sculptor and set designer - he was an early opponent of the socialist realism imposed by the Stalinist regime. His singular visual language, nourished by medieval, baroque and symbolist references, is characterized by deformed, grotesque and carnivalesque figures that question power, violence and the human condition. Persecuted in the 1960s for his artistic and theoretical research, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital and forced into exile in 1971. Settling successively in Paris and the United States, Chemiakine developed a protean body of work combining painting, sculpture, drawing and stage design, and collaborated with theater and ballet, notably with Rudolf Nureyev and the Mariinsky. His reflection on the "metaphysics of form" lies at the heart of his work. From the 1990s onwards, he created numerous public monuments, often controversial, in Russia and abroad. His work combines tradition and subversion, erudition and provocation.