Anatoly Osmolovsky - the history of life and creativity

Anatoly Osmolovsky is a very popular and obviously ambiguous figure of modern Russian culture. It involves a cocktail of a talented artist and attentive curator, an opposition politician and an outrageous person.

All his actions are characterized by humor and cynicism, which are on the verge of a foul. Some of his performances clearly violate the Criminal Code, but pursue good goals. He was born in the USSR and grew up in turbulent perestroika times. What kind of person is Anatoly Osmolovsky? The biography and creativity of this person will be discussed further.

How it all began

Osmolovsky Anatoly Feliksovich was born in 1969 in Moscow. And he did the first tests of the pen exactly in the literary field in the troubled time of perestroika. In 1987, he joined the little-known literary group "Vertep", replacing a year later membership in another group of more critical focus, with a name that corresponded to the spirit of that time - "Ministry of Defense of the USSR." Unfortunately, little is known about his activities in those days.

The movement of E.T.I.

His talent artist Anatoly Osmolovsky began to show in the early 90's, when he headed the odious movement ETHI. (Expropriation of the territory of art). It was a kind of experiment of artists who wanted to express their attitude to certain events in unusual ways.

For example, one of the first actions was the performance at the farewell match of the legend of Soviet football Fedor Cherenkov. One of the founders of the movement as a fan for the first time in the history of the USSR ran out onto the field and, after shaking Cherenkov's hand, fled. Of course, after that, the police seized him. But it was the first ever such fan-racer on the field in the USSR.

Another unusual action was the festival "The Explosion of the New Wave", which featured the 15 best films of the French directors of the avant-garde new wave. At the end of the festival, during the screening of the film "Zazi in the metro", the organizers decided to involve the audience in a retrospective: on the stage the actors repeated fragments from the film, then showered each other and the audience with cakes, and finally put the network on everyone.

Anatoly Osmolovsky was the ideological inspirer of one of the most notorious actions, as a result of which the bodies of the participants posted a well-known obscene word of three letters. The action was a kind of sarcastic cartoon on the recently published law on morality and was held on the eve of Lenin's birthday. Of course, on all participants opened a criminal case, the closure of which contributed to the cultural elite of that time. Art critics consider this action to be the beginning of the movement of "actionism" not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia.

We remind you that Anatoly Osmolovsky, whose photo can be seen in the article, was one of the organizers of this action.

The last action of the group was the so-called "Clearing": the participants wanted to clear snow on the ground allocated for the football field and play on it, but they were detained by the police. Anatoly Osmolovsky took an active part in the preparation of this action.

Group E.T.I. Disintegrated in 1992, when the program, according to the organizers, was exhausted.

Multifaceted personality

After that, Anatoly Osmolovsky worked for a short time as editor of the controversial cultural journal "Radek", published only three issues and revived in 2000 as a cultural society.

In 1993, Anatoly organized "Netsziudik" - a symbiosis of exhibition and performance activities. With this movement Osmolovsky again tried to revise the foundations of the postmodernists, making exhibitions and installations that undermined the established concepts of the new art.

In 1995, the Senate of Berlin and the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Exhibition and Cultural Center for Contemporary Art awarded the artist a grant for outstanding success in promoting unusual arts to the masses.

In 2008, Osmolovsky's talent was appreciated. He was awarded the Kandinsky Prize as the "Artist of the Year".

In subsequent years, Anatoly actively participated in cultural life, holding various exhibitions, publishing books, making films, organizing a pre-election race and, of course, shocking the public with his behavior.

Artist, recognized in many countries

His talent for the artist is appreciated by spectators and art historians, because his paintings are exhibited and kept in museums in Russia, for example, in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and abroad (gallery "Ludwig Forum" in Germany, Museums of Modern Art in Ljubljana (Slovenia) And Antwerp (Belgium)).

For all these years he took part in many personal and group exhibitions, each of which was not just an exhibition of paintings, but a manifesto of postmodernism and its relation to the realities of the modern world. After all, Anatoly Osmolovsky is not only a modern artist, but a multi-faceted creator, whose brilliant ideas can not always be realized only by putting them on canvas.

Osmolovsky is the rector ?!

One of Osmolovsky's recent unusual projects was the organization of the Baza Institute, in which he is the rector. The concept of the Institute differs from simple teaching of art in the usual sense of this kind of institution. This training-research platform for people who are able to think and want to learn this. For those who are ready to make extraordinary decisions and destroy the foundations of modern art. For all who are not ordinary, gifted and bold.