Shnurov Aleksandr
Karl Marx
1989
Mixed media
30 х 20 inches
Alexander Shnurov was born in Moscow in 1955. He had no professional training and became famous as an artist owing to a documentary, Schizophrenia, about artworks by mental patients after staying at a psychiatric clinic in 1974. That same year he exhibited his works at psychiatric clinic No. 15 of Moscow. Shnurov contributed his works to the exhibition at the VDNKh House of Culture pavilion, the first officially permitted exhibition of new art, in 1975, to the painting exhibitions of the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists in Malaya Gruzinskaya Street and to numerous apartment shows. His solo shows took place at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC, in 1985, the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, C.A.S.E. Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, New Jersey, in 1990, and private galleries of Washington and New York. Shnurov also contributed his works to many group exhibitions of artists of the so-called “other art” staged abroad, including the “Culture Shock” exhibition in Philadelphia (1983), the exhibition of Non-conformist artists in Berlin (1985), the “Moscow Avant-garde. 1950-1980” exhibition in Nordhessen, and the “Non-conformist Art in Russia. 1955-1995” exhibition in Ludwigshafen, Kassel and Altenburg (1995). Shnurov emigrated to the USA in 1989 and organized the Pravda (Truth) art party. In 2001-2002 the Other Art Museum (former Talochkin collection) staged an exhibition of Shnurov’s works, “Pastfuture”, in Moscow, and in 2007 the Zverev Center of Contemporary Art held an exhibition, “After Kamasutra for the High Morals in Art”, at which Shnurov showed his latest works. His works are in some museum collections, including the Tretiakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art and the Other Art Museum. Shnurov lives and works in the United States.