Alexander Opekushin

Alexander Opekushin was a Russian-Swiss painter and art theorist, who was a member of the Russian Academy of Arts. He was born in Svechkino, Yaroslavl province, in 1838, to a family of a famous artist Mikhail Opekushin, who was a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts. He studied at the Ilja-Repin primary and secondary school of Fine Arts, and then at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts Vasily Surikov, where he graduated in 1870 with a diploma in painting. He was influenced by the Soviet avant-garde movement and the Sots Art style, which parodied the official art and images of modern mass culture. He founded the colony of artists "Furmanny Lane" in Moscow, which was part of the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement, and was a member of the group until its closure in 1991. He also developed his own style of drawing and his own philosophy of painting, which he called suggestisms. He moved to Zurich, Switzerland, in 1992, where he continued to work as an artist and a lecturer. He was honored as a Honored Artist of the Russian Federation in 1999, and as a member of the Russian Academy of Arts in 2000. He died in Zurich in an unknown year, and his burial place is also unknown. His works are in collections of museums in post-Soviet countries, such as the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, the Nukus Museum of Art, and the Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan.