Bio & CV. Alexandr Antonov

Alexandr Antonov is a graphic artist working in Moscow, Russia.

Antonov belongs to the generation of masters who came to art in the 1970s and 1980s, and to this day have successfully continued to defend their right to a metaphorical, extremely conditional and subjective plastic language, to an allegorical, paradoxical interpretation of reality and a literary text. Antonov’s works are immediately recognizable thanks to bizarre surreal imagery, tangible texture, an eccentric, often completely irrational organization of space. The world of his images is unpredictable and misleading, catastrophically fragile and unstable, the grotesque-phantasmagoric habitat of the characters resembles the dilapidated, decaying theatrical scenery. Heroes and objects are in a state of precarious equilibrium: completely unable to stand upright (especially in the early cycles), they balance on an inclined plane, deform under the influence of powerful force fields, as if attracted to the ground by invisible magnets. Clouds, as a rule, float diagonally across the sky, buildings bend under their own weight, sway from the wind, while completely unexpected metamorphoses happen to animated characters. For example, the figure of Carroll’s Alice not only changes in size, but also becomes flat, cut into pieces, spreads out on steps and grows, together with the banked house. The work of Alexandr Antonov has become a very noticeable, indicative phenomenon in both book and easel graphics of the last four decades; many of the works that he illustrated are now difficult to imagine in a different pictorial interpretation. 

Dmitry Fomin

Alexandr Antonov was born in Moscow in 1946. In 1974 Antonov graduated from the Department of Graphics the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. 

Alexandr Antonov has taken part in exhibitions in the USSR and abroad since 1974. In 1981 Antonov became a member of the USSR’s Artists' Union. He is also member of the International Association of Artists and the Journalists' Moscow Union. His works belong to the genre of unique graphics, book graphics and etching. Alexandr Antonov actively collaborates with various Russian and international publishers. 

SELECTED SHOWS 

1974, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1998, 1999, 2005, 2007 Exhibitions of book illustration in Moscow 

1980 Exhibition of graphic arts IBA. Germany 

1981 Eighth exhibition of printmaking in Moscow 

1983 Exhibition of graphic arts IBA. Germany 

1986 2nd national exhibition of book illustration. Soviet Union 

Exhibtion of graphic arts. Banska Bystrica. Poland 

International biennale of graphic arts. Czechoslovakia 

1990 International exhibition of book illustration Miraculous Forest. Paris-Moscow 

International exhibition of book illustration BIB197. Bratislava 

1994 Solo exhibition “L’homme qui lit”. French Cultural Centre. Moscow 

2011 Solo exhibition “Man who reads”. Nashe Nasledie gallery. Moscow, Russia

His works can be found in priavate collections in Russia and abroad. 

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