YURI SEMASH (1948 – 2010) Abstract composition

signed in Cyrillic and dated ‘1967 / Y. Semash’ (on the reverse) oil on canvas 90.2 x 70 cm Painted in 1967 Painted in 1967, when the artist was just nineteen years old, the present work is an early example of Yuri Semash’s experimentation with surrealist imagery and abstraction. Born in Berdyansk, Ukraine, in 1948, Yuri Petrovich Semash studied art in Dnepropetrovsk and Leningrad. He became associated with the Leningrad underground art movement and Soviet nonconformism, exploring philosophical and existential themes through surrealist compositions. In 1985, Semash was admitted to the Union of Artists of the USSR. Following a successful solo exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1990, he settled in Switzerland in 1991, where he continued to live and work until his death in 2010.