Yuri Jharkikh

Yuri Zharkikh was born in 1938 in Tikhoretsk, Krasnodar Krai, and graduated from the Vera Mukhina Leningrad Higher School of Art and Design. One of the recognised leaders of the Soviet underground art and organisers of the so-called Bulldozer Exhibition in Moscow, Zharkikh contributed to the cultural history of Leningrad by organising the legendary exhibitions of unofficial art at the Ivan Gaza and Nevsky cultural centres and being among the founders of the Experimental Exhibitions Partnership (TEV). In 1984, he founded the Eidos artistic collective. After living in Leningrad between 1958 and 1976 and in Germany in 1977, the artist made France his home in 1978.

Zharkikh’s artistic practice evolved from dissident activism to late modernist Expressionism with a distinctive intonation derived from creative recontextualisation of Pavel Filonov’s ‘analytical realism.’ His canvases are a mingling ground for painterly expression, ideological narratives, religious symbols, and snapshots of urban life.