Felix Volosenkov

Felix Volosenkov was born in 1944. Despite aspirations to become a mural painter in his youth, after graduating from the Baku Art College, he entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema to train as a set designer. Working with theatres since 1977, Volosenkov designed around 50 productions, all the while teaching an extracurricular art class at the Alexander Tsiurupa Community Centre. The artist lives and works in St. Petersburg.

In 1984, Felix Volosenkov started exhibiting his works together with Valeriy Lukka and Vyacheslav Mikhailov, jointly intent on ‘subverting the painting canon.’ The friendship of these three greats had long anticipated the establishment of the St. Petersburg Academy of Contemporary Art of the Immortals (SPASI) founded by Volosenkov in 1994 to support and facilitate new developments in art. The artist’s works are rich in texture, achieved through the use of textile, foam rubber, gesso, and acrylic paints. In order to enhance the desired effect, the artist uses his set designer skills, transforming the pictorial plane into a theatrical performance. Irony and grotesqueness, unbridled energy and poignancy are equally characteristic of Volosenkov’s art.