Michail Roginsky
Mikhail Roginsky (Russian: Михаил Рогинский) was a Russian painter. He is a founder of original version of Russian pop-art. Roginsky was one of the leaders of Soviet Nonconformist Art and the creator of the modern national visual method, with its laconic means and inner expressiveness.
Mikhail Roginsky was born 14.08.1931, Moscow.
1946-1950 studied at the Perutsky Moscow State Art School, which was shut down for “formalism” and turned into the “Memory of 1905” Moscow Art School, from which he graduated in 1951with a degree as a “theater artist”.
1950-1953 served in the army. 1954-1960 he traveled around Russia working as a designer in provincial theatres in Severodvinsk, lysva and Pskov and returned to Moscow in 1960. He taught at the Moscow City Art School on Kropotkinskaya Street from 1963 to 1969, and then at the Krupskaya Distance Learning People’s University of the Arts until 1976. 1960s – 1970s Took part in many apartment exhibitions and in semi-official showings of nonconformist art. In the 1970s, Roginsky together with Orlov and Komar and Melamid organized and participated in a series of apartment exhibitions in Moscow. In 1978, Roginsky emigrated to France and settled in Paris. The first show in Russia to show a substantial number of his works was in 1993, after his long absence, in the exhibition Roginsky, Turetsky, Chernyshov at the Central House of Artists. Roginsky had a one-man show at the Tretyakov Gallery in 2002. 5 June 2004 he died in Paris.
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Alexander Glezer, who organized the now famous exhibition of non-conformist art in Moscow that was bulldozed by the authorities in 1974 described Roginski and his art in these terms:
„In 1964 Roginsky got onto Soviet posters – street and railway ones, i.e. things crudely done and expressing fairly accurately the essence of Soviet reality. Roginsky found the reality of that time interesting and sought to express it. As a result, having started with poster, he created Soviet Pop-Art. He made an attempt to display his works, but the exhibition was immediately closed.
In those times this did not surprise or intimidate anyone. It was closed and that was all. And the artist kept working. He got more and more into objects – the things surrounding us in our everyday life. (During the war) there was poverty everywhere and people got into the habit of having simple things. For me those things symbolize Russia“.
In 1978, Roginsky moved to Paris. One year before his emigration he had gone back to documentary art and did a series of five or six works with cans. „I felt (he explained) that I had to go back to what I had begun with, to return to myself“. He left Russia shortly after he had finished that series. Roginsky answer to the question whether the West had any influence on him, was brief: „Sure“. But he could not say exactly what. „Everything, (he believes) a different life, a different atmosphere, a different reality. I am generally very much influenced by where I live, what I see around me, what kind of art I behold and the type of people I rub shoulders with'“.