Mikhail Chernyshov

Artist. Born in the family of Ivan Chernyshov in Moscow (1945). Painted his first works after visiting the exhibition of modern American art in Sokolniki (1959). Studied contemporary Western art from books, magazines and catalogues in the Library of Foreign Literature (1960–63). One of the first Muscovite artists to address Pop Art, which he saw in magazines (early 1960s). First one-man show Red Lorry at the apartment of his brother Mikhail Roginsky (1962). Held an exhibition with Mikhail Roginsky (closed on the second day) at the Disc Cinema, which he later defined as the first in the Soviet Union “to have similar tendencies to Pop Art” (1964). Studied at Zagorsk Technical College of Art and the department of the history and theory of art of Moscow State University (1965–66). In the quest for his own style, appropriated the artistic devices of Constructivist design, geometric abstraction and such militarist motifs as tanks and airplanes. Aimed to model a mass image of local culture. Subjected to a course of enforced treatment in a psychiatric hospital (1968). Gave a series of performances with the other members of his Red Star group (1975–78). Addressed pure geometric abstraction (1977). Emigrated to the United States (1981). Lives and works in Brooklyn in New York (from 1981). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1962), including one-man shows at the Exit Art Gallery in New York (1987) and Predecessors of Russian Pop Art in collaboration with Boris Turetsky and Mikhail Roginsky at the Central House of the Artist in Moscow (1998). Lives and works in the United States.