Anatoly Osmolovsky is a very popular and clearly controversial figure of contemporary Russian culture. It involves a cocktail of a talented artist and an attentive curator, an opposition politician and a shocking person.
All his actions are inherent in humor and cynicism, which are on the verge of a foul. Some of his performances clearly violate the Criminal Code, but pursue good goals. He was born in the USSR and matured in turbulent perestroika times. What kind of person is Anatoly Osmolovsky? The biography and work of this person will be discussed later.
How it all began
Osmolovsky Anatoly Feliksovich was born in 1969 in Moscow. And he did the first attempts at writing in the literary field during the hectic time of perestroika. In 1987, he joined the little-known literary group "Vertep", changing his membership a year later to another group of a more critical orientation, with a name that corresponded to the spirit of the time - "USSR Ministry of Missile Defense." Unfortunately, little is known about his activities in those days.
Movement E.T.I.
Anatoly Osmolovsky began to show his talent as an artist in the early 90s, when he headed the odious movement of E.T.I. (Expropriation of the territory of art). It was a kind of experiment of artists who wanted to express their attitude to certain events in unusual ways.
For example, one of the first actions was a performance at the farewell match of the legend of Soviet football Fedor Cherenkov. One of the founders of the movement as a fan for the first time in the history of the USSR ran out onto the field and, having shaken Cherenkov’s hand, fled. Of course, after that he was seized by police. But this was the first such fan run in the history of the USSR.
Another unusual event was the “New Wave Explosion” festival, which showed 15 of the best films by French directors of the avant-garde new wave. At the end of the festival at the screening of the film “Call the Subway”, the organizers decided to involve the audience in retrospect: on the stage, the actors repeated fragments from the film, then threw cakes at each other and the audience, and in the end they threw the net over everyone.
Anatoly Osmolovsky was the ideological inspirer of one of the most notorious actions, as a result of which the famous three-letter obscene word was posted by the bodies of the participants. The action was a kind of sarcastic cartoon on the recently published law on morality and was held on the eve of Lenin's birthday. Of course, a criminal case was opened against all participants, the closure of which was facilitated by the cultural elite of that time. Art historians consider this action the beginning of the movement of "actionism" not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia.
We remind you that Anatoly Osmolovsky, whose photo can be seen in the article, was one of the organizers of this action.
The last action of the group was the so-called "Clearing": the participants wanted to clear the snow on the land allocated for the football field and play on it, but they were detained by the police. Anatoly Osmolovsky took an active part in the preparation of this action.
Group E.T.I. broke up in 1992, when the program, according to the organizers, was exhausted.
Multifaceted personality
After that, Anatoly Osmolovsky worked for a short time as the editor of the ambiguous cultural journal Radek, which was published in only three issues and was revived in 2000 as a cultural society.
In 1993, Anatoly organized "Netsesiudik" - a kind of symbiosis of exhibition and performance activities. With this movement, Osmolovsky again tried to revise the foundations of the adherents of postmodernism, making exhibitions and installations that undermined the established concepts of new art.
In 1995, the Berlin Senate and the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Contemporary Art Exhibition and Cultural Center awarded the artist a grant for outstanding success in promoting unusual art to the masses.
In 2008, Osmolovsky’s talent was appreciated. He was made a Kandinsky Prize winner as "Artist of the Year."
In subsequent years, Anatoly actively participated in cultural life, conducting various exhibitions, publishing books, acting in films, organizing an election race and, of course, shocking the audience with his behavior.
An artist recognized in many countries.
His talent as an artist is appreciated by spectators and art historians, because his paintings are exhibited and stored both in museums in Russia, for example, in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and abroad (Ludwig Forum Gallery in Germany, Museums of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Antwerp (Belgium)).
Over all these years, he took part in many solo and group exhibitions, each of which was not just an exhibition of paintings, but a manifesto of postmodernism and its relation to the realities of the modern world. After all, Anatoly Osmolovsky is not only a modern artist, but also a multifaceted creator, whose brilliant ideas can not always be realized only by putting them on the canvas.
Osmolovsky - the rector ?!
One of Osmolovsky’s latest unusual projects was the organization of the Baza institute, in which he is the rector. The concept of the institute is different from simply teaching art in the usual sense of such institutions. This is a training and research platform for people who are able to think and want to learn how to do it. For those who are ready to put forward extraordinary solutions and destroy the foundations of modern art. For all who are extraordinary, gifted and courageous.