Anatoly Feliksovich Osmolovsky
Anatoly Feliksovich Osmolovsky (born July 1, 1969, Moscow) is a Russian artist, theorist, curator, and one of the most prominent figures of Moscow Actionism. He was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 2007 in the category "Artist of the Year."
Osmolovsky began his education in 1987 at the ZIL Higher Technical School, studying at the faculty of metal-cutting machines of new technologies, but did not complete his studies. In the mid-1980s, he was influenced by the work of Arkady Severny, which led him to write his own poetry. In 1987, he founded the poet group "Vertep" ("Vierte Poezii" or "Believe in Poetry"), which was close to Futurism. Within the group, a subgroup called "Last Wave" included Osmolovsky, Pimenov, and Turov. The poets performed publicly and attended the "Poetry" club run by Kirill Kovalji. During this period, Osmolovsky developed an interest in Western structuralist and poststructuralist theory and Marxism, reading Roland Barthes and later Marx.
After the breakup of "Vertep," Osmolovsky, Turov, and Gusarov formed the group "Ministry of PRO USSR," influenced by the legendary French journal Tel Quel and the French OULIPO group, standing out for their provocative and scandalous behavior. On November 11, 1989, the seminar "Terrorism and Text" at MSU marked—by Osmolovsky's account—the beginning of Moscow radical actionism. He began organizing performances and art interventions, often provocative, in public spaces.
In 1989, together with Pimenov and Gusarov, he founded the movement "E.T.I." (Expropriation of the Territory of Art), which conducted several artistic actions in public urban spaces. The most notorious included spelling out an obscene word on Red Square using participants' bodies in April 1991. After the dissolution of "E.T.I.," Osmolovsky helped initiate the revolutionary-competitive program "Netsezyudik" (1992–1994), focusing on the idea of being "superfluous" in the context of avant-garde art and the theory of "methodological anarchism."
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Osmolovsky was active in organizing exhibitions, performances, and curated projects both in Russia and internationally. By the late 1990s, he transitioned from radical performance to object production and theoretical reflection, proposing concepts such as "nonspectacular art," "auratism," and "reflexive modernism."
He has curated numerous exhibitions, taught at art institutions, and founded the "Baza" Institute for artists and critics. In 2015 he exhibited works responding to the Ukrainian conflict, and in 2024 he left Russia following a search of his apartment, later being designated as a foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice of Russia.
Works in collections
The Collection of Contemporary Art of the State Museum-Reserve Tsaritsyno, Moscow
Krings-Ernst Galerie, Cologne, Germany
V. Ovcharenko, Moscow
Exhibitions and auctions
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1991 - "Day of Knowledge" (ETI movement with K. Zvezdochetov). Regina Gallery, Moscow
1992 - "Leopards Burst into the Temple" Regina Gallery, Moscow
1994 - "Chewing Gum with Hair" XL Gallery, Moscow
1994 - "My Way" M. Gelman Gallery, Moscow
1996 - "Something Occasionally Falling Out of the Trash Bin" XL Gallery, Moscow
1996 - "Chechen Shashlik" M. Gelman Gallery, Moscow
1996 - "My Bloody Love" (with Tatiana Hengstler). XL Gallery, Moscow
1996 - "Situative Action fur PDS" Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
1997 - "Order for the Art Army" XL Gallery, Moscow
1999 - "Sheets" XL Gallery, Moscow
2001 - "Imposition" Central House of Artists, Moscow
2003 - "Seven Deaths in Moscow" XL Gallery, Moscow
2004 - "How Political Positions Become Form" Stella Art Gallery, Moscow
2006 - "Products" Stella Art Gallery, Moscow
2006 - "Helen's Shoulders" (with Victor Alimpiev). Stella Art Gallery, Moscow
2006 - "Golden Fruit of Nathalie Sarraute" Foundation "Contemporary City," Moscow
2007 - Villa Romana, Florence, Italy
2007-2008 - "Breads." M&Y Gelman Gallery, Moscow
2008 - "New Works" M&Y Gelman Gallery, Moscow
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
(For brevity, only a selection listed here. Please specify if you need the complete list.)
1992 - "Multiplicity Culture", Rome, Italy
1993 - "Aperto'93", XLV Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1994 - "Fluchtpunkt Moskau", Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany
1995 - "No Man's Land", Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center "Nikolaj", Denmark
2000 - "ARTEAST 2000+", Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Slovenia
2002 - "DAVAJ! Russian Art Now", Berlin and Vienna
2003 - "Utopia Station", 50th Venice Biennale, Italy
2004 - "Seven Sins", Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Slovenia
2006 - "Rusia!", Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
2007 - "From Russia with Love", Merano, Italy; "Progressive Nostalgia", Prato, Italy; "Documenta XII", Kassel, Germany, etc.
PERFORMANCES & ACTIONS
1989 - Theoretical seminar "Terrorism and Text", MSU, Moscow
1990 - "Explosion of the New Wave" film festival (actions), Moscow
1991 - Series of street performance provocations with "ETI"
1993 - "Netsezyudik's Journey to Brobdingnag", Mayakovsky Square, Moscow
1998 - "Barricade" (dedicated to May 1968), Herzen Str, Moscow
1999 - "Against All," Lenin Mausoleum, Red Square, Moscow
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
1992 - "To Joseph Kosuth, or Civilization of the Tlinov" (Y. Leiderman solo). Vita Nova Gallery, Minsk
1993 - "The War Continues," Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
1996 - "Antifascism & Anti-antifascism," Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
2001 - "Instead of Art," Zverev Center, Moscow
2004 - "Art Without Excuses," Shchusev Museum of Architecture, Moscow
2009 - "Mausoleum of Rebellion," Stella Art Foundation
2014 - "Expansion Painting," Museum of Moscow (with Eugenia Kikodze)
Author about himself
I am an atheist, Marxist, progressive, and syndicalist.
I adhere to the philosophy of Karl Marx and partly to Vladimir Lenin, especially his early works on the development of capitalism in Russia, which clearly outlined the possible consequences of such development. I am also interested in modern Western left-wing philosophers.
(From an interview with Konstantin Rylev, "Vzglyad" March 3, 2008)
I am an avant-garde artist. For the avant-garde artist, analytical research in the riskiest, least understood, or least attractive areas of life is important.
("Afisha," December 15, 2004)
I strive to experiment. Prolonged engagement in one thing dulls perception; to return to it at a new stage, it is necessary to pursue something else.
(From an interview with Aksinya Kurina, UKRAINSKA PRAVDA, February 9, 2009)
In the 1990s, I and those who worked with me felt ourselves to be more political revolutionaries than artists. By about 2000, it became clear that it was impossible to be both a harmonious artist and an effective politician. The choice arose: politics or art. I chose art.
(From "Arthronika," #2 2004)
Critic
Anatoly Osmolovsky is one of the most active participants in the Russian art scene, a practitioner and theorist of contemporary art. His activity took shape in the turmoil of the post-Perestroika period, within the boundaries of 1990s Moscow Actionism. However, after art institutions and the market established basic conditions for regular artistic functioning, Osmolovsky moved away from his earlier radical media provocations, applying a "nonspectacularity" strategy, later shifting to the direct production of objects.
(Vladimir Levashov, from the press release for the exhibition "Products" at Stella Art Foundation)
Osmolovsky's creative career began in the era of the perestroika glorification of artistic "underground," and within the scandalous group "ETI," he tested the patience of aesthetes and intellectuals as well as the surface of the canonized style itself. Opting for double resistance—not only to modes of representation, but also to the brutal system of the social functioning of contemporary art—he rejected personal experience in favor of left-radical ideology.
(A. Obukhova, "Anatoly Osmolovsky," in Today, September 11, 1993)
Osmolovsky, as "Artist of the Year," is associated with many of the most notable milestones in Russian contemporary art of the last two decades. His works are held in leading pinacothecas around the world, and he is a consistent figure in realizing his own aesthetic strategy. His radicalism evolved from social and political gestures in the 1990s towards avant-garde form and autonomy of art. Today, his objects affirm formal expression as a relevant statement.
(Alexander Evangeli)
He can be called the number one political artist in Russia. All his vigorous, powerful, unconquerable activity (new wave poetry, film festival, performances, exhibitions, fights, lectures) aims to reveal the absurdity and self-sufficiency of politics and its dependence on language and culture. Devoid of pragmatic goals and elevated to an absolute, his political work acquires a certain intellectual beauty and enchanting anti-ethics, while also documenting the realities of political culture in modern Russia—the literal understanding of political force as the will to terror, the mutual corruption of the media and big politics, and its similarity to petty hooliganism.
(Arseniy Sergeev, "Who is Anatoly Osmolovsky")
Bibliography
No information available
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