Eduard Gorokhovsky: From Siberia to Moscow, Selected Works on Paper from the Kolodzei Art Foundation

Eduard Gorokhovsky: From Siberia to Moscow, Selected Works on Paper from the Kolodzei Art Foundation, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, 420 W. 118th Street, 12th floor, New York, from January 29 to March 30, 2018. Opening reception on Wednesday, January 31, 6-8pm.
This exhibition features selected drawings from the late 1960s and early 1970s by prominent Russian artist Eduard Gorokhovsky (1929-2004) while he was living and working in Novosibirsk and artist’s prints from his Moscow period.
Eduard Gorokhovsky was born in 1929 in the town of Vinnytsa (Ukraine). In 1954 he graduated from the Odessa Engineer and Building Institute majoring in architecture, studying under A. Postel, T. Frayerman, G. Gotgelf, and A. Kopylov. His first solo exhibition took place in 1967 in Novosibirsk. In 1973 Eduard Gorokhovsky moved from Novosibirsk to Moscow. Since 1991, Gorokhovsky has lived and worked in Offenbach, Germany. Gorokhovsky participated in many exhibitions in Russia, the United States, and Europe; his paintings and works on paper are in major museums around the world.
Eduard Gorokhovsky was one of the first Soviet Nonconformist artists to use old photographic portraits, into which he inserted a text, a silhouette, another photograph, and geometric figures as the main source for his prints and paintings, creating intentionally unresolved serial images. The photographs provided a framework that kept an artwork in balance, while the intruding objects added a certain intrigue to the whole. Many of Gorokhovsky’s works convey a sense of history or the process of change, often alluding to the disappearance of individuality in a totalitarian society, or the destruction of the family unit brought on by the Bolshevik Revolution, a succession of devastating wars, and the forced relocations resulting from the Stalinist policy of collectivization.
Eduard Gorokhovsky remembered:
“But back in the 1950's in Novosibirsk, I lived and worked after graduation. There, in Siberia, I met people who introduced me to art, which was not even mentioned in the institute, with strict ideological control. The discovery for myself of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, the Russian Avant-Garde, I owe, above all, to the remarkable artist Nikolai Gritsuk, now deceased. I consider him my real first teacher, who opened my eyes to many things in art.
“Twenty years lived in Siberia were a good preparation for a real understanding of the essence and purpose of art. This understanding came after moving to Moscow in 1973 and meeting with the ‘Sretensky Boulevard’ artists circle. The 1970s were filled with intensive work on the search for a new plastic expressiveness. Constant communication and discussion of artists with each other yielded results. At the time we could not even dream about any exhibitions or publications. I think that everything done by this group of artists (Ilya Kabakov, Victor Pivovarov, Eric Bulatov, etc.) is distinguished by uncomplicated purity and unselfishness. This art was truly free. Then, together with perestroika, a painful process of integrating Russian art into world culture began.”
Since 1974, Eduard Gorokhovsky participated in many group exhibitions in museums, including Ich Lebe, Ich Sene, at Kunstmuseum, Bern in 1988; Russian Art from Lenin to Gorbachev, Botanik, Brussels, Belgium in 1988; Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change 1890-1990, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1995, Berlin-Moscow/Moscow-Berlin, Kunst 1950-2000, at The State Historical Museum, Moscow, and Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin in 2004; his prominent solo museum exhibitions include Eduard Gorokhovsky: the Limits of the Rectangle: My Unlimited Space at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg in 2004; Eduard Gorokhovsky at the Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick in 2004-2005. Gorokhovsky's works are in many museum collections, including: The State Tretyakov Museum, Moscow; The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA; Kolodzei Art Foundation, New Jersey, USA; State Museum of Arts, Dresden, Germany; Jewish Museum, Frankfurt-am-Maine, Germany; The Ludwig Forum of International Art, Aachen, Germany; The Costakis Collection, Athens, Greece; Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria.
The Kolodzei Art Foundation, Inc., a US-based 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public foundation started in 1991, organizes exhibitions and cultural exchanges in museums and cultural centers in the United States, Russia and other countries, often utilizing the considerable resources of the Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art, and publishes books on Russian art.
The Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art is one of the world’s largest private art collections, and consists of over 7,000 works, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, digital art and videos, by more than 300 artists from Russia and the former Soviet Union. For additional information visit http://www.KolodzeiArt.org or email Kolodzei@kolodzeiart.org
The Harriman Institute at Columbia University is one of the world's leading academic institutions devoted to Russian, Eurasian and East European studies. The mission is to serve our community at the university and beyond by supporting research, instruction, and dialogue, sponsoring vibrant and multidisciplinary events that bring together our extraordinary resources of faculty, students, and alumni. The Harriman Institute is committed to training the next generation of regional specialists to play leadership roles in setting the academic and scholarly agenda, making policy and challenging accepted truths about how we study our rapidly changing world. http://harriman.columbia.edu/event/exhibit-opening-eduard-gorokhovsky-siberia-moscow-selected-works-paper
Captions for the images: Eduard Gorokhovsky, Worker, 1968. Watercolor on paper, 20 x 14-1/2 in.
Group A Group B, 1982. Screenprint on paper, 33-7/8 x 24-3/16 in.
Portrait, 1977. Etching, bronze on paper, 23-3/4 x 22 in.
Credit line: Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art, Kolodzei Art Foundation, www.KolodzeiArt.org