IZO

Obituary of German artist Sigmar Polke, originator of Capitalist Realism (Telegraph).

The mathematician Vladimir Arnold – the most-cited mathematician in the world – has died (Kursor, in Russian).

The popular photographer Alexander Slusarev has died. This is his blog (slusarev).

Marika Rivera, dancer daughter of Diego Rivera and "Russian-born Cubist painter Maria (Marevna) Vorobieff, who was a mistress to the Mexican artist during his first marriage", has died (CBC).

Ekaterina Degot and I on Olga Lopukhova (Open Space, in Russian).

The curator and gallerist Olga Lopukhova has died in Moscow. I knew Olga for more than 20 years, ever since the days of perestroika, when she was married to the artist Andrei Roiter. At one time, in exchange I think for some curatorial advice, I even had the pleasure of giving her English lessons at her flat at Dinamo. She created the prototype of the Vinzavod complex at Artstrelka, where her own gallery regularly had the most interesting exhibitions, often devoted to young or unrepresented artists: I remember in recent years Khaim Sokol, Andrei Kuzkin, Anna Zhelud. She wasn't rich, she didn't have high intellectual pretensions, and so her contribution could be overshadowed; but she played a hugely important role. Olga was incredibly generous of her time and expertise and, above all, always a joy to see and work with.

Appreciation from Marat Guelman with many links (maratguelman, in Russian).

The late TV presenter Roman Trakhtenberg.

Bakhchanyan and Death (thanks, VK and MK).

Alexander Gnilitski obituary (Open Space, in Russian).

The artist and writer Vagrich Bakhchanyan has died in New York, aged 72 (Radio Svoboda, in Russian) (thanks, AB and several other readers). There is a good choice of web resources, but this seems particularly good, uniting images, reminiscences and aphorisms (samizdat.zaraz). Bakhchanyan had been suffering for months from a neurological disorder that led to him hearing loud unstoppable screams; it is reported that he committed suicide. IZO reader Mark Kelner writes:

He was a rare example of an artist who was open, warm and loving in life, as he was talented, imaginative and a true non-conformist in art.  A true one-of-a-kind, I feel he was under-represented if only because he chose to use paper instead of canvas, which collectors seem to appreciate more. I like to think that he was simply ahead of the curve and that the world will catch up with his ideas in my lifetime, but sadly not in his.

Below, a Bakhchanyan that formed part of the Forbidden Art show (IZO). When it was made, in the 1980s, it was risky because the satire directed at Lenin; nowadays, in Russia, the problem is the image of Christ.

 
UPDATE: a late work: the ears refer to the noises he was hearing towards the end of his life; photo by Bakhchanyan's wife, Irene.

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The death of Kiev painter Alexander Gnilitsky (born 1961) on 1 November hasn't occasioned quite the same wide response as the death of Bakhchanyan: conceivably, because Gnilitsky had been ill with skin cancer from some while and his death was very much expected (gazeta.ua). I'm not very well acquainted with his oeuvre; the last works I saw were some impressive big canvases at a show in Moscow that accompanied ArtMoskva; but he was very varied and inventive and is clearly one of the best of his generation of Ukrainian painters.

Sergei Mikhalkov, Stalinist children's poet, author of the "lyrics" of the USSR national anthem, has died (stanis-sadal, in Russian). Meanwhile, words from Mikhalkov's anthem lauding Stalin have been reinstalled at the newly-restored Kurskaya metro station in Moscow, causing controversy (The Smart Set).

Yuri Olkhovsky, life-long commentator on Russia, has died. He worked at the NSA, Defense Department, Radio Liberty, Voice of America (WP) (thanks, MK). No word on whether this Cold Warrior ever returned to the territory of the former USSR after he and his parents were put in a camp in Germany in 1941. Maybe not: until quite recently it happened that some Soviet emigrés devoted their lives to the analysis of a country they would never re-visit.

Mark Kelner writes:

It's interesting how Koons' sculpture take on a new context after MJ's death. Reports of his tremendous debt (over $300 million) contrast this "gilded age" icon, which really tells the story of contemporary art and what it commented on in 80s -- a spiritual bankruptcy vs. the pursuit of money as a new religion.

Below, installation at my gallery 2004, in the exhibition entitled White: Phil Klein, Michael Jackson I & Michael Jackson II,  2004, Lambda print, each 57 x 42 cm.

Si Frumkin, a leading Soviet Jewish activist in California, has died (JTA):

When Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev visited President Nixon at the Western White House in San Clemente, Frumkin released 5,000 balloons with the message "Let My People Go." He hired a helicopter to fly over the Super Bowl with a banner: "Save Soviet Jewry."

Also: the Russian-speaking population of New York is growing, and the Democrats have decided it should get Russian-language voting assistance and registration (newsday.com) (thanks, MK).

Actor Oleg Yanovsky, who worked with Tarkovsky, has died aged 65 (AFP).

The poet Vsevolod Nekrasov died on 15 May (KP, in Russian). He was one of the originators of the Moscow conceptual school and for a long time published only in samizdat. More here (Kommersant, in Russian).

The poet Lev Losev, biographer of Iosif Brodsky, has died (Kommersant, in Russian).

Ballerina Ekaterina Maximova of the Bolshoi Theatre has died (AP). Quite a leap here:

The poet Alexei Parshchikov has died in Cologne, age 54 (Lenta.ru, in Russian). I knew him in the 80s, when his girlfriend - or was it wife? - was Olga Sviblova and he was part of the metametaphor (метаметафора) group of writers and artists that included the painters Evgeni Dybsky, Igor Ganikovsky, Boris Markovnikov and Zakhar Sherman. UPDATE: memories of Parshchikov (avmalgin, in Russian).

The well-known translator Natalya Trauberg died in Moscow in 1 April. She was born in 1928; she translated English authors including Greene, Chesterton, C S Lewis and Woodhouse and also from from portuguese, french and italian. Here's an interesting interview with her about the nature of Christian fairy tales, a subject which occupied her throughout her life (foma, in Russian).

"Legendary Soviet spy" Anatoly Gurevich has died in St Petersburg, aged 95. For his wartime efforts abroad he received, on returning to the USSR in 1945, a 20-year prison sentence. He was finally rehabilitated in 1991. In the same year his son, born some 50 years earlier, finally tracked him down in Moscow (Centrasia, in Russian).

Valentina Kropivnitskaya, the wife of Oskar Rabin, died in Paris on 23 December (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Short biography of Alik Sidorov (see IZO earlier today) (RIA Novosti, in Russian). His last project appears to have been an unusual-looking ultra-high-format camera (paralleltravel, in Russian).

Alik Sidorov, co-editor of A-Ya, the journal of unofficial art published in Paris in 1979-80s, has died in Moscow (Open Space, in Russian).

The legendary ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya, winner of four Stalin Prizes, has died (Open Space, in Russian).

Russian solo round-the-world yachtsman Evgeni Gvozdev has died in Italy, probably drowned in a storm near Naples (Kursor, in Russian).

Reactions to the death of Aleksi II, including this one (mrparker, in Russian):

Malefactors kidnapped a two-month-old child who had been brought to the church by its parents to be christened. But when the service for the peace of the patriarch's soul began, the inconsolable parents found their child.

Biography of Aleksi II (BBC).

Aleksi II, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus, died at his residence in Peredelkino at 11 am this morning (BFM, in Russian).  Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger was born in Tallinn in 1929. He's a controversial figure under whose leadership, in recent years, the Orthodox Church has become a powerful force in Russia.

The last surviving emigre-citizen of the old Russian Empire, Andrei Shmeman, has died in Paris aged 88; he left Russia as a child with his father, an officer in the imperial army (MIGnews, in Russian).

Stalin's grandson Iosif, by profession a cardiologist, has died in Moscow. During his life he declined to write memoirs and rarely gave interviews (Ekho Moskvy, in Russian).

Singer Muslim Magomaev has died, aged 67 (Kommersant, in Russian). I linked to him on IZO before re his performance of My Way (IZO). Below: he performs the song Thank You (Благодарю тебя):

The graphic artist Boris Efimov (Yefimov) has died, aged 108 (Daily Telegraph). It's a strange business, thinking about the depths of time that extremely old people link to. About 1980, when working as a caretaker at a block of flats in the Marylebone Road, I got to know a gentleman, a Mr Solomon, who was very nearly one hundred years old. He came from a family of similarly long-lived people. One of his relatives - maybe a great-grandfather - had told him, way back circa 1885-90, about how he, as a child, had seen Napoleon in Trieste. I looked it up: that would have been in 1797, I think.

The well-known sculptor Lazar Gadaev has died in Moscow aged 70 (Kommersant, in Russian).

Possibly Solzhenitsyn's last interview (Independent).

There are obituaries to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has died aged 89, all over the internet. I'm linking to Zinovy Zinik's unhagiographical take in a recent review of The Solzhenitsyn Reader (Times Literary Supplement). UPDATE: fixed broken link.

Death of an old-school kremlinologist, helper to Norton Dodge (LA Times). Update: he was apparently a great Rukhin collector (thanks, MK).

The illustrator Mai Miturich, son of the graphic artist Petr Miturich and of Vera Khlebnikova (sister of futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov), has died in Moscow (Open Space, in Russian).

Dmitri Prigov II

Dmitri Prigov, hospitalised following a heart attack, has died, reports Lenta.ru.

I met Prigov in the 80s and bought a drawing from him that I still have, a melancholy satirical image of Mikhail Gorbachev drawn in ink on newspaper. Some years after the collapse of the Soviet Union he moved to England and set up home in Stanmore on the outskirts of London. Here his wife, his son Andrei and Andrei's family lived, and here he too was based, when not shuttling to Moscow and around the world. He observed a rigorous, almost monastic regime: the day was divided into the hours for writing and the hours for drawing, with a nap between; he worked deep into the night. When he relaxed, he smoked and drank beer. I saw him read his poetry in London last year, at a gathering of British musicians and writers. "Perform" is a better description than "read": sitting at a table, he delivered his work in a sonorous dramatic fashion, sometimes almost shouting, sometimes almost singing. It was a compelling experience even to the bulk of the audience, which was non-Russian-speaking.

His website (all in Russian) is here.