Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union

Oskar Rabin

SELECTED WORKS BY Oskar Rabin

Oskar Rabin
BARACK WITH MOON

1959

Canvas, oil

70х90

Oskar Rabin
POMOIKA № 8

1958

Canvas, oil

70х90

Oskar Rabin
SHURA'S HOUSE

1962

Canvas, oil

60,5х80

Oskar Rabin
LE CAFE DU POETE ZABGIR

1962

Canvas, oil

70х89

Oskar Rabin
AT THE GRAVE OF SIDOR POLIKARPOVICH

1963

Canvas, oil

90х110

Oskar Rabin
RUSSIAN POP-ART № 3

1964

Canvas, oil

109х78

Oskar Rabin
RUBLE

1966

Canvas, oil

80х84,5

Oskar Rabin
VIOLIN AT THE CEMETARY

1969

Canvas, oil

80х101

Oskar Rabin
ULITSA PRESVYATOY BOGORODITSY

1977

Canvas, oil

110х90

Oskar Rabin
NEPRAVDA

1975

Canvas, oil

89х109

Oskar Rabin
STILL LIFE WITH BOTTLES AND NEWSPAPER

1973

Canvas, oil

33х48

Oskar Rabin
THE ICON AND THE CAT

1974

Canvas, oil

90х70

Oskar Rabin
THREE PASSPORTS, TRYPTICH

2006

Canvas, oil

81х260

Oskar Rabin
PROVENCIAL TOWN WITH LAMP

2006

Canvas, oil

89х116

Oskar Rabin
ICON, VODKA AND DEMOCRATIC CAVIAR

2004

Canvas, oil

81х130

Oskar Rabin's BIOGRAPHY

‘I worked as if possessed, trying to paint slick, syrupy, ‘safe’ things which were easily within the reach of the understanding of the ‘powers that be’. I then destroyed these paintings one by one. I just couldn’t bear to look at them’.
‘In my painting, I experience the pleasure from the process itself, mixing and laying down the colours, enjoying their brightness and dimness, the subtle and broad brushstrokes, their smell. Then, I want express sorrow, happiness, hate, anger, love, thoughts about life and people. I want to capture life and communicate it through my own feelings. To achieve this, for symbols I use normal objects around me. Their meaning in painting is different than in real life’.

Born in 1928
Oskar Yakovlevich Rabin’s work, celebrated in the West as ‘Solzhenitsyn in painting’, honestly and eloquently reflected the mood in society during the 1960’s and 1970’s. An outstanding master with a deeply individual way of seeing the world, Oskar Rabin was one of the originators of non-conformism and one of the organisers of the ‘Lianozovo Group’ which grew up around Evgeny Kropivnitski. Over a period of seven years (1958-1965), the former camp barracks in Lianozovo, where Oskar Rabin lived with his wife, Valentina Kropivnitskaya, acted as the centre of the progressive intelligentsia. Surrounded by his family, life in a Moscow suburb with ‘ignoble’ objects from everyday Soviet material life and its dramatic absurdity was for many years the central theme of Rabin’s creativity. The artist’s favourite genres included landscape, still-life and interiors, continuing in the tradition of 1920’s European expressionism. Trying to imbue his painting with a social-critical tone and bring out the ‘anti-humanity’ of modern man’s environment, Rabin uses a distortion of perspective, the principals of deformation and the destruction of large-scale relationships. Through his emotionally saturated style, as well as his laconic manner, Rabin interweaves different genres and artistic devices, elements of collage and assemblage are introduced into the paintings. The drama of the works is highlighted by chronological ‘markers’, denoted by fragments of newspapers, stickers and labels. The uncorrupted truth of life, seen by the communist authorities as dissidence, released from the chains social-realism, was cause for Oskar Rabin to lose his Soviet citizenship. Moving to Paris in 1978, he gained there new inspiration and international recognition.

‘His subjects are taken from the life around him, in other words he uses it as material. During the ten years or so that he lived in the barracks, he painted barracks. After moving to a new house, he painted new houses. He rethinks reality and gives it an exceptionally individual colouring. The face of the artists is staring out from behind each object introduced onto the composition’s canvas. His particular choice of items barely changes from one painting to the next: buildings, churches, bottles, fish, cats, crosses, icons and advertisements. Less often there are flowers, samovars, teapots, road signs…’. Leonid Kropivnitski

“I would compare Oscar Rabin with Gustav Kurbe, who cut down the Vendôme column, a symbol of absolutism. In the same way Rabin was a legend of unofficial art, which cut down the invisible column of the Soviet official art.” Leonid Sokov