Oscar Rabin: A Happy Life Journey

Pushkin House invites to join an evening commemorating 45 years since the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition. It was organized by three underground artists, Oscar Rabin, Yuri Jarkikh and Alexander Gleser and took place in the Belyaevo forest at the intersection of Profsoyuznaya Street and Ostrovityanova Street, Beliaevo on the outskirts of Moscow. It featured over 30 artists. This event was forcefully broken-up by a large police force, bulldozers, water cannons, and dump trucks, all heavily packed with military men and policemen. They destroyed the paintings with bulldozers, arrested and beat the artists, journalists, and visitors.

Oscar Rabin belongs to the generation of artists, writers, and poets of the 1960-s, which was later called shestyadesyatniki. He was one of the forefathers and originators of the Soviet non-conformism, an organizer of the Lianozovo Group which grew up around poet and artist Evgeny Kropivnitsky. As well as other members of the Lianosovo group, after the Bulldozer Exhibition Rabin became politically “undesirable” for the Soviet regime and had to immigrate, Interestingly, some of his works were not allowed to be taken abroad, e.g. his “Pomoika N8”, which is now in the collection of Tsukanov Family Foundation. “Bulldozer Exhibition” brought Rabin into a serious conflict with the Soviet system. In 1978 he was exile from the USSR to France, then stripped of his Soviet citizenship and ended up settling in Paris with his wife, the artist Valentina Kropivnitskaya, and their son Alexander, also an artist.

The evening will include a panel discussion with Professor of Art History at Courtauld Institute, Sarah Wilson, arts patron, Marc Ivasilevitch, art historian Kirill Svetlyakov, and art collector Sergei Revyakin. The discussion will be followed by a drink reception and screening of Oscar Rabin: A Happy Life Journey (Оскар Рабин: Счастливый Путь) directed by Alexander Shatalov and produced by Marc Ivasilevitch.

The event will be held in English.