Vitaly Komar

In 1985, Komar and Melamid’s traveling exhibition appears at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland; Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, UK; and Museum of Decorative Arts in Louvre, Paris. They were the first Russian artists invited to Documenta 8 in Kassel (1987) and they were also the first Russian artists to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982). They had a solo show at the Brooklyn museum in 1989.

Komar and Melamid can be found in Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Art; The Penguin Concise Dictionary of Art History; Art since the 40s; Bildende Kunst im 20 Jahrhundert; Bordas Petit Dictionaire des Artistes Contemporains; Art in the Modern Era; Phaidon's The 20th-Century Art Book; and 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die (Universe Publishing, 2006). Their work is included in collections of major art museums across the world.

They collaborated with the conceptual video artist Douglas Davis on Questions, New York/Moscow in 1976 (collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); with Fluxus musician Charlotte Moorman on Passport in 1976 (Ronald Feldman gallery); with Pop artist Andy Warhol on We Buy and Sell Souls in 1978-79 (private collection, Moscow); with dozens of artists and Soviet monuments on Monumental Propaganda in 1993 (traveling show, Independent Curators Inc; Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC; and Marat Guelman gallery, Moscow); with the masses as polled by Martilla and Kiley Poll Company and DIA Foundation on Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Paintings in 1994 (Ludwig Museum of Modern Art, Cologne, 1997; Kunsthalle wien, 1998); with composer Dave Soldier on an opera about Washington, Lenin and Duchamp, Naked Revolution in 1997 (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and The Kitchen, New York); with painter Renee the Elephant in 1995 and photographer Mikki the Chimpanzee in 1998 (Russian pavilion at Venice Biennale,1999).

After the Symbols of the Big Bang exhibited at the Yeshiva University Museum (New York, 2002-03), Vitaly Komar started New Symbolist works. His project Symbols of the Three-Day Weekend was exhibited at Ronald Feldman gallery, New York; Matthew Bown gallery, London; Marina Sandman gallery, Berlin; Mina Litinsky gallery, Denver; Ben Uri gallery - The London Jewish Museum of Art (he received the International Jewish Artist of the Year Award); Humanities gallery at Cooper Union, New York (with catalog by Dore Ashton and Andrew Weinstein) in 2005. In 2007, he was a Special Guest of the Moscow Biennale (Marat Guelman gallery and Tretiakov State gallery).

Above: Lenin With Crown, c 2005

 

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