Boris Sveshnikov

Painter, graphic artist, illustrator. Born in the family of Pyotr Sveshnikov in Moscow (1927). Studied at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (1945–46). Arrested and accused of anti-Soviet activities (1946), sentenced to prison camp in Ukta in the Komi Republic (1946–54), where he worked alongside Lev Kropivnitsky and created a cycle of pen drawings similar in spirit to the stories of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, depicting the small figures of prisoners in the middle of wintry expanses or gloomy interiors. Lived and worked in Tarusa (1954–57). Rehabilitated (1956). Member of the Union of Artists (1958). Illustrated books (1960s). Addressed purely formal experiments and abstract subjects, working in a Pointillist technique (from the second half of the 1960s). Examples of his Gulag art were published by Mihail Chemiakine in the Apollo-77 almanac (1977). Died in Moscow (1998). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1958), including Expo ‘58 in Brussels (1958) and Times of Change: Art in the Soviet Union (1960–85) at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg (2006).