Yuri Nikiforov (1947-2016) is known as the last representative of modernism on the stage of the Leningrad underground, an innovator of poor art, a Russian magician. Since the 1970s, he has been actively involved in exhibitions, participated in the organization of creative associations TOKHIN and PARASIT, created an art school at St. Petersburg State University and the legendary exhibition site ART POLYGON on the territory of the Pushkinskaya-10 art center - in the same place where his own workshop was located. Today, young artists can freely experiment in art on this creative platform.
Yuri Nikiforov is a cult, mythical, and tragic figure for St. Petersburg art. In his early works, you can find graphic sheets that surprise with their subtle execution, lightness and regularity. At the same time, Nikiforov is the author of a huge number of large-scale brutal panels, paintings, objects in which natural and industrial materials are fused together: glass, iron, sand, earth, tar, bread, fittings and much more. In his works, the material gets a voice, and that voice is rough, assertive, growling.
Nikiforov's works are large expressionist canvases, often related to abstraction. The master also created figurative works. His paintings and installations – raw meat, torn canvas, sandpaper texture and hoarse scream – are life in the flesh. Color and line are full-fledged characters with a distinct character. Nikiforov also made garbage installations. The artist has a gift for conveying this smell by visual means. Using unsightly materials, Yuri Nikiforov tells his own story – true, wild, radical.
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