Tretyakov Gallery continues the cycle of exhibitions devoted to artists «second avant-garde», now living in exile. This range is owned and Mikhail Kulakov (born 1933) - one of the pioneers of postwar abstraction Russian. Over thirty years ago, he moved to Italy to protest against the ban display abstract works on professional stages. The exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery is dedicated to the 75 th anniversary of the artist.

Michael Kulakov continues the tradition of art non-incorporated Russian avant-garde artists. After you sign in late 1950 on Wednesday in Moscow and Leningrad nonconformists, Mikhail Kulakov was in the middle of the first public scandals related to abstract art. He is one of the few representatives of abstraction period «Thaw», remaining true to yourself. For half Kulakov develop this area by voicing their interest in rethinking the classics of modernism. Difficult to deny the influence and ideas of abstract expressionism in the creative evolution Kulakova. He is experimenting with technique and color, building their canvases for color contrasts, holds risky experiments in painting techniques and composition, aims to enrich the language bespredmetnichestva anthropomorphic elements. The key to the painter finds himself addressing the interaction of color, shape, sound, space and movement.

Zamoskvorechie native of Moscow, Mikhail Kulakov had received training in Leningrad. However, the way his art was not straight and smooth. In 1951, he entered the Moscow Institute of International Relations, who two years later dropped out, увлекшись finding himself as an artist. According to him, your own handwriting, he found already by 1957. In 1962, Kulakov graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema, where he studied at the faculty in a workshop production of famous scenographer Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov . Working in the field of theater and art and design book graphics, Kulakov parallel sessions continued painting. His abstract works, he showed, in addition to the legendary apartment exhibitions, technical institutes, such as the Institute for Physical Problems.

Well-known among the underground, a member union of graphs of Leningrad, Kulakov hardly experienced the rejection of his formal art institutions. In 1976 he moved to Italy, where he still lives in Umbria, «in seclusion Taganrog». He is a painter, creating abstract and figurative works on biblical subjects, and contemporary directions in art - installation, performance, actively exposed. In the West, work Kulakova adopted and private galleries and public museums. Since 1984, Kulakov - Distinguished Member of the Academy of Fine Arts it. Pietro Vanuchchi city of Perugia, in 1993 he was awarded the Italian Prize Sulmona, in 2003 - Gold Medal XXVII International Award «Migration».

Living abroad, the artist insists on returning to the domestic arts and the onset of perestroika began to participate in exhibitions in the USSR and then Russia: the Soviet Cultural Foundation (Moscow, 1989), in the Arsenale (Riga, 1990) in Leningrad Manezh, where the exhibition was the most ambitious. In 1993, the work of Italian Kulakova period were displayed on a personal exhibition at the State Museum of Fine Arts. Alexander Pushkin. Works by the artist are kept in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Museum, Pushkin Museum to them. Alexander Pushkin, in a number of museums and private collections in Russia, Italy and the United States, Canada, Germany.

First to M. Kulakova retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the artist, done in one year with a personal demonstration at the National Museum «Palazzo Venezia» in Rome. In the hometown of artist shows nearly seventy works in the collection of the author's collection and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow private collections. Created, both in Russia and in exile for nearly fifty years, from 1960 till 2008, many works exhibited for the first time.

September 15 at 19:00 at the State Center of Contemporary Art will take place creative evening Michael Kulakova.

Paintings and graphics Mykhail Kulakova 1960-2007 years can be seen in the halls of 80 and 81 at the State Tretyakov Gallery Krymsky Val to 5 October, 2008.

Source: museum. ru