Erik Bulatov, Russian Sots-art Artist

Эрик Булатов (Erik Bulatov) русский классик соц-арта (is a classic Russian sots-art artist). He was born in Sverdlovsk in 1933 and now he lives and works in Paris.

He graduated from the Surikov Art Institute in 1958. During thirty years, he spent his time and talent between illustrations for children’s books and painting.

In September 2006, an important retrospective of his work took place at the State Tretyakov Gallery. The exhibition was called “Живу – вижу” (“I live – I see”). The title of the exhibition comes from a line of one of Nekrasov’s poem).

The exhibition was part of a cycle of 12 paintings, which represented Bulatov’s work about the place of words in space (in one of the painting, he used a line from a poem of A. Blok, the 11 others are from poems of V. Nekrasov). In his comments about the paintings, E. Bulatov said that the inscriptions from Nekrasov’s poem have nothing to do with the picture, but with the visualisation of the image of the word. Строка Некрасова «Живу и вижу» точно выражает творческое кредо Э. Булатова (Nekrasov’s line “I live – I see” expresses exactly Bulatov’s credo).

Socio-grotesque naturalistic landscapes with large poster symbols and underlined slogans. In his picture, the inscription “Слава КПСС” (Fame for the CPSU), obscures the sky like a lattice. A way to emphasise the contrast between propaganda and reality.

Патимат Котикова