Erik Boulatov, a major figure of contemporary Russian art, died in Paris at the age of 92

He founded Sots Art, the Russian equivalent of pop art, a movement opposed to Soviet realism.

Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg)-born artist Erik Boulatov, a leading figure in Russian contemporary art, died at the end of the week at the age of 92, the Russian Academy of Fine Arts of which he was an honorary member told AFP on Monday, November 10. Bulatov, “one of the founders of Moscow conceptualism and Sots Art, died on Sunday in Paris, we learned from his wife”, the institution said.

His works, especially assemblages linking image and language, draw heavily on the iconography of the Soviet regime. They have given him numerous monographic exhibitions throughout the world. The typography often hides blue skies, characters, or colorful landscapes and urban environments.

With bold irony, Bulatov used formulas and slogans that were ubiquitous in the Soviet Union – “Glory to the CPSU” (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), “NO ENTRY” – to better divert their attention, and explain the use of language as an instrument of control over the regime. Born in 1933 in the Urals to a communist family, he graduated in 1958 from the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow. He began his career as a children’s book illustrator, influenced by the Russian Avant-garde of the early 20th century.

His painting was later influenced by pop art which he discovered in 1957 at the Youth Festival in Moscow. Through the group he formed in the 1960s, “Sretensky Boulevard” (the address where the artists met), Erik Boulatov became a leading member of the Moscow conceptualists, unofficial artists who opposed socialist realism.

Admired by intellectuals, he remained misunderstood in the Soviet Union and unknown in the West. It was only thanks to Perestroika, the economic and social openness initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, that it emerged from anonymity. In 1988, Bulatov was part of the official Soviet selection for the Venice Biennale. He then moved to New York, then in 1992, to Paris with his wife.

In 2016, collector couple Ekaterina and Vladimir Semenikhine donated the oil Glory to the CPSU at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Celebrated in Russia as the founder of Russian pop art and photo-realism, painter Erik Boulatov returned to his home country several times to exhibit there.