History of Art: Soviet Nonconformist Art- Oscar Rabine

Art of the 20th Century

A Revolution in the Arts

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map

Soviet Nonconformist Art

Oscar Rabine

Born in 1928 in Moscow, Oscar Yakovlevich Rabine is a painter and graphic artist, and one of the organizers of the nonconformist movement. From 1946 to 1948, he studied at the Riga Academy of Arts, and from 1948 to 1949 at Moscow's Surikov State Art Institute, from which he was expelled for "formalism." Rabin's professional and moral development was strongly influenced by his father-in-law, the artist and poet Ye. Kropivnitsky. Rabin was a leading figure in the "Lianozovo Group," which took its name from the small settlement in the Moscow region where the Kropivnitsky family lived. In 1978, he was forced to emigrate from the USSR and was deprived of his citizenship "for behavior discreditable to the title of Soviet artist." He now lives and works in Paris. He has participated in and initiated numerous exhibitions and political actions by independent artists. He recently had a solo exhibition at the Mimi Ferzt Gallery in New York (March/April 2001).