Mikhail Chemiakin — artist with roots in the USSR
Mikhail Chemiakin is a Russian-American artist born in Moscow whose fantastical, dark, and surrealist sculpture and painting made him one of the most distinctive voices in post-Soviet art. Expelled from the Soviet Union in 1971, he settled in Paris and later New York, becoming a major figure in international contemporary art.
Tracing the roots — Moscow
Born in Moscow in 1943 and expelled from the Leningrad Psychiatric Hospital — where Soviet authorities had committed him for his subversive art — Chemiakin was one of the USSR's most persecuted underground artists. His deep friendship with Vladimir Vysotsky, whom he met in Paris exile, is one of the great artistic partnerships of the Soviet diaspora.
Moscow. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.