Sveshnikov Boris

February 1, 1927 (Moscow) - October 6, 1998 (Moscow)

painter, graphic artist and illustrator.

From 1944 to 1946, Sveshnikov studied at the Moscow Institute of applied and decorative arts.

In 1946 he was arrested on charges of "anti-Soviet propaganda" and sent to 8 years in the camps. Escorted to Uhtizhemlag in Komi, worked a night watchman in a woodworking shop, which was an art workshop. There he had the opportunity to paint, and began "camp Suite" - a series of drawings of the camp. Gulag-art "Sveshnikov, samples of which were first published in published Shemyakin almanac" Apollo 77 "(Paris 1977), made a splash at exhibitions at art camps and exile, who conducted since 1990 Company" Memorial ».

In 1954, after serving a term Sveshnikov returned to Moscow in 1956, was rehabilitated.

In 1954-1957 he lived in Tarusa, then settled in the capital.

Member of the Union of Artists since 1958. In the same year he first exhibited his works at the exhibition "EXPO-58" in Brussels (Belgium). In 1959 took part in the 5-th exhibition of works of young artists in Moscow, in 1961 - in an exhibition of works of Moscow artists in the National Theater in Tarusa.

In the 1960 - 1990 Master fruitfully worked for Goslitizdat, creating a set of illustrations for the works of Goethe, Hoffmann, Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, Maeterlinck, K. Paustovski and other authors.

Participated in exhibitions:

1969 - at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Moscow);

1970 - Nuove correnti a Mosca (Museo Belle Arti, Lugano, Switzerland);

1974 - Progressive Strömungen in Moskau 1957-1970 (Museum Bochum, Bochum, Germany);

1976 - Exposition au Musee russe en Exil (Montgeron, France).

The artist has participated in exhibitions held in Austria (Vienna), Germany (Braunschweig, Konstanz, Saulgau, Esslingen), as well as in the U.S., Italy, Belgium, etc.

Sveshnikov was «the only one who did not have to turn in his work. Faithful to a naturalist, he never was. ... Sveshnikov is literature, but this literary special character. He nowhere logically constructed plot. Numerous characters of his paintings are always in action, but these actions are not aimed at laying down in a coherent plot concept. His songs filled with whimsical shapes and illogical. This spiritualistic penetration in particular, no one had seen the world. ... Usually, people connected with landscape, which itself has a great emotional strain. Brilliantly painted figures of men emphasized expressive, sometimes almost grotesque, but it is not grotesque. And not surrealism. Even without romanticism, though it was him Sveshnikov closest » (L. Kropiwnicki, 1965).

artist's works are kept in the Museum of Contemporary Russian Art in Jersey City and Zimmerly Museum at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA), as well as in meeting society "Memorial" (Russia) and in other collections.