Boruch was the pseudonym of Boris Steinberg, son of Arkady Steinberg and brother of Eduard Steinberg. Considered a talented poet by his family, Boruch never published a line of his poetry, but became one of the most brilliant figures of unofficial art. He was an uncompromising and independent figure.

The artists of the duo Komar and Melamid are known primarily as the inventors of Sots Art, which they coined in 1972. The term itself is a combination of “pop-art” and “socialist realism”. But unlike American pop-art, which drove advertising to the point of absurdity, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid came up with the idea of bringing symbols of ideological propaganda to the point of absurdity.

David Burliuk is known as the father of Russian futurism. As a young man, he and his friend Vladimir Mayakovsky gave out a lot of slaps to public taste. The futurists painted their faces, wore bright clothes, decorated the buttonhole of their jackets with spoons — in general, they terrified the average man. Then the revolution — emigration — quiet fruitful work in America. It is no coincidence that the majority of works we see today on the market are items from the American period.

In his essay on the artist's work, Valery Silaev very aptly compares Bukh to a volcano, and his painting method to the boiling lava. Bukh was tuning himself for some time, he was getting psyched up. And then he rushed into action — quickly and expressively. He mixed paints on canvas, spread them with fingers and brush, rubbed with newspapers and rags. His work was a physiological necessity. From morning till night. If finished paintings were not picked up in time, sometimes the artist painted them anew.

Andrei Grositsky's works are the hits of our auctions. The paintings of the metaphysician of the subject world are of growing interest to collectors. No wonder. Works of such a high level appear on the market that eyes widen. And here is another indisputable masterpiece. One of Grositsky's favorite subjects. He didn't just call them “Shovel” but “Portrait of a Shovel”. As if we speak not about an instrument but about an animate object covered with scars and wrinkles of labour.

The artist and sculptor Ernst Neizvestny is a lump of post-war unofficial art. He is the author of the 75-meter monument “Lotus Flower” in Egypt, “Masks of Sorrow” in Magadan, “Tree of Life” in Moscow and other outstanding works. The man was not only talented, but also uncompromising and amazingly courageous. Ernst Neizvestny's modernist works are very recognizable stylistically and interesting for philosophical deconstruction. His paintings are populated by powerful centaurs, half-robots, symbolizing the mixing of humanity and technical progress. And also distorted face-masks, Prometheus, Icarus and the humanistic “tree of life” are the pinnacle of his philosophical quest.

The play of natureless structures in space. Biomorphic cosmism. Artist 100% recognizable. Bright, expressive, innovative. Whoever sees it for the first time will never guess that these bright cosmic spots are sublimated impressions of explosions, which the artist saw in the war. Today Nikolay Vechtomov is one of the most sought-after artists among collectors, and his works regularly become auction hits.

Regular viewers of our channel know that Sveshnikov's “grave” stories are a complex dispute with fate, a form of the “vanitas” genre — a reflection on the meaning, purpose and frailty of life. He knew what he was talking about, because more than once he was on the verge of life and death.

Andrey Grositsky was an artist in the orbit of unofficial art. He was called the “poet of things”. For Grositsky, not only aesthetics was important, but also the spirit of the object. The metaphysics of the object world remained his field of research throughout his life. He transformed shovels, meat grinders, rusty latches into semi-abstract portraits of things of stunning beauty and depth. Grositsky was lucky to live to be recognized. Nowadays, he can certainly be called a favorite of collectors.

What many consider Sveshnikov's Kafkaesque romance is actually a sublimation of the difficult and traumatic memories of his youth. At 19, he was arrested on a trumped-up case of preparing an assassination attempt on Stalin and sent to the camps almost to certain death. Sveshnikov quickly lost his health and was driven to the brink of madness by starvation and disease. But he survived by a miracle thanks to the help of his friends, and his drawing sessions helped him keep his sanity. The works of the 1980s are considered by many connoisseurs to be the pinnacle of Sveshnikov's art. His phantasmagorias were becoming more and more complex in terms of subject, and painting was reaching the highest degree of elaboration.