Konstantin Zvezdochetov

Konstantin Zvezdochetov was born and raised in Moscow. He studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School from 1976 to 1981, and went on to help found several influential art groups: “Mukhomory” in 1978 and, in 1986, “World Champions”, the year he also published the almanac “Nochnaya Zhizn” (Night Life).

He works across painting, graphic art, installation, performance, writing, photography and song. He describes himself not as a painter but as a picture-maker — someone who manufactures pictures — and holds sixteenth place among the fifty most expensive Russian artists.

He has taken part in more than twenty solo exhibitions, with shows in Moscow, Geneva and Florence, and in 1992 he took part in Documenta in Kassel.

His style is parodic and at the same time poignant. He draws on mass culture, on historical and folk figures, and on the forms of popular art, mixing primitivism, the traditional Russian lubok, kitsch and the manner of Soviet comics — including those of the magazine “Krokodil”. His work carries an ironic, sarcastic nostalgia for the Soviet era, and yet it is warm and well-meaning: his engagement with Soviet heritage stays respectful and precise. Describing his own approach, the artist stresses that he follows no particular fashion.

Konstantin Zvezdochetov's works are held by the Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the State Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscow), the ART4 Museum (Moscow), the Novy Museum (Saint Petersburg), the Samara Regional Art Museum, the Zimmerli Art Museum (New Jersey), the MUKHA Museum of Contemporary Art (Antwerp), the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art (Prato), the Műcsarnok (Budapest), the Moderna Galerija (Zagreb) and the Eastern European Museum of Contemporary Art (Ljubljana), among others.