Dialogues – The 60s Generation: Lydia Masterkova/Evgenii Rukhin

This exhibition is the first in a series that pairs artists who shared a common history, but whose careers have not been served by histories of unofficial art outside Russia. Each artist was extremely prominent in dissident circles: Masterkova in Moscow and Rukhin in Leningrad. Lydia Masterkova (1929-2002) was associated with the Lianozovo group of artists and writers who gathered, and sometimes lived, on the outskirts of Moscow in what had been a gulag (labor camp) for women. Her abstract paintings are most often shown together with those of her husband, Vladimir Nemukhin.

Evgenii Rukhin (1943-1976) was a major artist working in Leningrad and one of the figures closest to Norton Dodge, who was an avid collector of both artists’ work. His paintings often incorporated the wording of official decrees, street signage, and debris, together with traces of religious imagery.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.