Pivovarov Viktor

Viktor Pivovarov, born 1937 in Moscow, is a Russian artist living in Prague. He moved from Moscow in 1982 and continues to live there to date. V. Pivovarov along with Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, and Irina Nakhova, was one of the leading artists of the Moscow Conceptualist artistic movement of the 1970s. His work reflected the complete ideologization of the Soviet lifestyle, often simultaneously expressing criticism and nostalgia for this lifestyle. His works consciously with the overlapping of various pictorial levels and the introduction of unexpected perspectives. Storytelling and allegory have remained central to his paintings, drawings, collages and albums to this day and lead the viewer into a surrealist cosmos. Within this universe, conventional ways of seeing, mass media visual culture and the icons of Western and post-Soviet educational canons are called into question by means of irony and distortion. The Russian tradition of icon painting, allusions to the art of Kazimir Malevich and Western figures such as Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte play a central role in Pivovarov’s art, as well as Russian myths, songs and legends. His works belong to several institutional collections, including the Tate, London; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow and the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, National Gallery, Prague.