LOT #42 AKSININ ALEXANDER “Matrioshka”

Date of the work: 1980;
Etching.
13×9,5 cm, 18×14 cm;
About artist: Alexander Aksinin was born October 2, 1949 in Lviv.
Since 1977 Aksinin was a freelance artist focusing on printed and drawn graphics. His early oeuvre included ink and watercolor drawings, he also photocopied and colored his black and white pictures. In 1974 he made the first etching, and since then this printing technique became the main one for him.
The apartment of Aksinin and his wife, writer and artist Engelina (Gelya) Buryakovskaya (1944-1982), became one of the Lviv centers of informal art; first home exhibitions (“kvartirnik”) were held here. Alexander and Gelya were well acquainted with the underground art of Moscow and Leningrad. They had good personal relations with some artists that worked outside the official Soviet art, in particular, with Viktor Krivulin, Dmitri Prigov, Ilya Kabakov, Oscar Rabin, Eduard Gorokhovsky, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Genrikh Sapgir. Aksinin was also friends and communicated with the Baltic artists, first of all, with Tonis Vint, with whom he developed a close rapport1, as well as Stasys Eidrigevicius, Vello Vinn, Mare Vint, Vladimir Makarenko. Aksinin also kept in touch with Polish artists “Stanislaw Fijalkowski, Andrzej Strumillo, Wojciech Jakubowski.
Since 1974, Aksinin participated in group exhibitions; in 1979 his first personal exhibition was organized in Tallinn with the assistance of artist T. Vint. In the early 1980s, poet V. Krivulin helped to arrange several Aksinin’s “kvartirnik” exhibitions in Leningrad and Moscow.
A. Aksinin’s works are in many museum, public and private collections all over the world. In 2015 his etching series “Boschiana” was included in the permanent exposition of the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (the Netherlands).
Aksinin’s etchings were twice awarded (in 1979 and 1985) with the Medal of Honor at the International Biennale “Small Graphic Forms” in Lodz (Poland). In 1981, his etching St. Benedykt was awarded the first prize of the ex-libris competition for the library of the Abbey of the Order of the Benedictines (Lubin, Poland) dedicated to the 1500th anniversary of St. Benedict. In 1990 A. Aksinin was awarded with a special honorary prize by the jury of the international biennial of graphics “Interdruk’90” in Lviv.