Pyotr Tatarnikov

Descendant of a prominent family of St. Petersburg artists, Pyotr Tatarnikov was born in 1953 in Leningrad. After graduating from the Monumental Art Department of the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (class of Andrey Mylnikov), he spent a long time lecturing at the Institute’s School of Architecture.

Tatarnikov is a self-proclaimed ‘traditional artist’ favouring the classical genres of landscape, self-portrait, and genre scene. His melancholy, desolate, and majestically silent landscapes featuring rocks and cliffs seem utterly surreal, more like ideas of rocks floating in the misty haze than actual masses of stone. The multiple painted layers with their deep, smoothly transitioning halftones morph into otherworldly outlines.