Evgeny
Lvovich Rukhin

Born in Saratov on 2 July 1943 in the family of employees. In 1961-1966 he studied at the geological faculty of Leningrad University. In 1964-1965 he was a student at the Moscow Higher school of industrial art (former Stroganov). Emerged as master mostly on your own – communicating with other artists of the "underground" (including O. J. Rabin) and study of Western modernism from reproductions. Exhibited at home since 1966 (exhibition in one of the Leningrad cinemas) and abroad from 1967 (gallery B. Parsons in new York). Member of the "bulldozer", i.e. dispersed with the use of the bulldozer exhibition in Moscow vacant lot in Belyaevo (1974). Of great importance for the creative life of the artist was familiar with N. Dodge, the American collector, amounting to the largest collection of "unofficial" art of the former Soviet republics.

Among his early works is dominated by restrained in tone, sometimes almost monochrome landscapes and urban motifs, related to the art of Rabin. "Classic Rukhin" (end of 1960-ies – 1970-ies) is a composition in the spirit of pop art, one of the founders of the Russian version of which he came. Painting is combined here with the real subject of textures or embossed imitations. Manholes, fragments of empty interiors, coupled with the deliberately rough spots of paint left like the traces of a sloppy repair, combine to create a disturbing world full of alienation and longing. Sometimes the flavor becomes mysteriously flickering, combined with the motivations of the icons, as if etched into the paint layer. His pictures (usually without names) of the collection of the Dodge (now in the Museum of Rutgers University, new Jersey, USA), Moscow Museum of "other art" at the Russian state humanitarian University and other collections.

Rukhin died in a fire in his Studio in Leningrad on may 24, 1976.