Boris Sveshnikov was born in Moscow in 1927. He was accepted to the Moscow Institute of Applied Art, but his training was interrupted by his arrest in 1946, after which he was sentenced to the labor camps for seven years. According to popular legend, the first thing he did when he returned to Moscow in 1953 was visit the Tretiakov Gallery.
Sveshnikov’s artistic vision combines Russian mysticism with the reality of Soviet labor camps, much in the tradition of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the House of the Dead. Sveshnikov’s drawings from the labor camps are unusual in that they remind one of the well-known fantasies of Botticelli and Callot. A Pointillist technique and Neoimpressionist style are typical of Sveshnikov’s works. Sveshnikov’s art is an example of an intimate perception of the world that transforms suffering into religious experience.
Sveshnikov lives and works in Moscow.
