Oleg Vassiliev

As with many nonconformist artists in the Soviet, Vassiliev’s “official” source of income provided means and materials for the artist to pursue his interest in painting privately. By avoiding any social-political struggle to exhibit publically, Vassiliev and his contemporaries chose their own influences, making contact with the older generation of pre-world war Il Modernist “unofficial” artists, such as Vladimir Favorsky and Robert Falk…

Early in his career Vassiliev supported himself primarily as a book illustrator, while in his personal work he employed modes of expression similar to those practiced by Picasso, Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Rothko, and Pollock. As a member of the Russian Underground, Vassiliev practiced largely in secrecy, and like many of his generation of artists who lived and worked under the restrictive thumb of Soviet censorship, Vassiliev left Russia after the end of the cold war, relocating to New York City in 1990…

In his art Vassiliev combines the traditions of Russian Realism of the 19th century with the Russian avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century. Vassiliev’s principal themes, which were born while he was in Russia and continue to the present day, are his memories of home and houses, roads, forests, fields, friends and family…

Portrait of the artist