MIHAIL CHEMIAKIN

Mihail Chemiakin was born in Moscow in 1943, grew up in occupied East Germany, and returned to Russia in 1957 where he was admitted to the Special High School of the Repin Academy of Art in Leningrad. He was expelled from art school for failing   to conform to Socialist Realist norms, and from 1959-1971 worked as a laborer in various capacities. He was subjected to compulsory treatment at a mental institution, which was a standard way of dealing with ideological dissidents at that time.

For five years he worked on the maintenance crew of the Hermitage Museum. In 1967, the artist founded the St. Petersburg Group and developed the philosophy of Metaphysical Synthesism, dedicated to the creation of a new form of icon painting based on the study of religious art of all ages and peoples.

In 1971 Chemiakin was forced out of the USSR by the Soviet authorities. He settled first in France, and then moved to New York City in 1981. In 1989, the return of Chemiakin’s work post-Communist Russia began with the first exhibition of his work there since exile. Subsequently, he continued to show his work there and has installed three monuments in St. Petersburg, to Peter the Great, to the victims of Political Repressions, and to the Architects and Builders of St. Petersburg.

In Moscow, Chemiakin’s fifteen-figure sculptural ensemble, Children-Victims of the Sins of Adults, was commissioned by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov as a gift to the city and dedicated in 2001. In London, Chemiakin’s sculpture commemorating Peter the Great’s embassy to England in 1968, stands on the banks of the Thames River. In New York Chemiakin’s Cybele, the Goddess of Fertility, stands on a Prince Street in SoHo. A sculpture from the Carnival at St. Petersburg series is on permanent Display in Paris, and a version of Peter the Great is in the collection of the Chateau de Vascoueil-Muse Michelet in Normandy, France.