Zorikto Dorzhiev (born 1976) works in easel painting, graphics, book illustration, sculpture, and is also a film artist. Having absorbed the fundamentals of the Russian academic school and the "cosmopolitanism" of contemporary European art, Dorzhiev continues to follow the Buryat national traditions.
In 1996, he graduated from the Buryat Republican College of Culture and Arts in Ulan-Ude, in 2002—from the Krasnoyarsk State Institute of Art, and from 2003 to 2005 he undertook an internship at the creative workshops of the Russian Academy of Arts. Training in the academic painting system enabled Dorzhiev to absorb and subsequently use skills in building form, the laws of color composition, and the organizational principles of image composition.
Zorikto's creative method is based on a synthesis of several elements, the main of which are the figurative tradition of the academic school and the cultural heritage of the nomadic peoples of Buryatia. Dorzhiev works with traditional folk imagery with great care and delicacy. He manages to avoid the populist proliferation of recognizable elements, and any ethnographic or museum-like reconstruction. The artist creates images imbued with characteristic features of Central and East Asian culture, such as the withdrawal and introspection of characters, the plastic asceticism and laconicism of forms, and the ornate treatment of surfaces. The backdrop for his works is often the boundless expanse of the steppe. The theme of the Great Steppe is the leitmotif of Dorzhiev's work. And the image of the main hero—the nomad—the artist defines thus: "For me, the nomad is a contemplator. ...This is an artist, a poet, a philosopher. As a rule, he is alone."
Solo exhibitions by Zorikto have been successfully held at the Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), the Museum of the Orient (Moscow), Neumünster Abbey (Luxembourg), the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, France), the European Commission (Brussels, Belgium), and Hay Hill Gallery (with an opening ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom).
