Alexander Trifonov

Alexander Trifonov was born in Lyubertsy, in the Moscow Region, in 1946. After graduating the Kalinin Art-Industrial School in Moscow (1972), he moved to Karelia and has lived and worked in Petrozavodsk since. Trifonov’s artistic manner, themes and methods have undergone a very interesting transformation. At first the portraits, landscapes and still lives by Trifonov were similar to the romanticism of the Moscow artists of the seventies. In the eighties he was attracted to geometrical abstraction. Later Trifonov went back to a figurative style but his characters and subjects developed in a completely different way. Trifonov’s paintings became geometric and his pictures are painted in cold colours. The artist is very cautious about shapes that help him to develop a specific visual philosophy.

More recently, Trifonov has begun to explore the opportunities of computer graphics. The use of computer technology embodies his desire to overcome the flesh and sensuality in painting.

In the mid ‘90’s, the Art-Contact group was established in Petrozavodsk. Trifonov joined the exhibitions arranged by the group. One of the most famous exhibitions, 10+, opened in Petrozavodsk in 1994 and showed more than two hundred works by artists representing thirty countries. Petrozavodsk artists managed to create a space where Russian, British, German and Scandinavian artists realised their projects. The group contributed to the artistic development of life in Petrozavodsk and promoted new artists. That was the time — during the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s — when Trifonov started to use computer graphics and exhibit his works together with photographers and designers. Artistic research by Trifonov, conducted with the help of cutting edge technology, is pursued in the sphere of abstract and synthetic compositions that he had already explored previously in his painting and graphics. The ‘man-made’ factor disappears and this degree of distance typical for Trifonov only strengthens the effect of a picture. The world of Trifonov’s paintings is mysterious and unreal. This is a world of permanent transformations. It is an attractive and enchanting world created by the imagination of the artist.