BORIS SVESHNIKOV (1927-1998) Green Dream
Lot 116
16 00020 000
signed (lower right), title Green Dream (on reverse)
oil on canvas
68 x 47 cm
Boris Petrovich Sveshnikov was a Russian painter, graphic artist, and book illustrator. Belongs to the nonconformist Soviet art, popular in 1960s. Since 1958 he was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, which he never graduated from, as in 1946 he was repressed for anti-Soviet propaganda and associations with the group planning an assassination attempt on Stalin, for which he was sent to the camps. He was rehabilitated in 1956. Known primarily for his «camp suite» or «Gulag Art,» which caused a sensation at the eponymous exhibitions of «art in camps and exiles.».
The artist’s creative legacy includes hundreds of drawings, canvases, and design works. Many of Sveshnikov’s works, including an impressive part of the «camp suite,» are held in various major museum and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City and the Rutgers University Zimmerli Museum (New Jersey, USA), as well as in the collection of the Memorial Society, the State Center for Contemporary Art, and other collections.