Yuri Kuper came to sfumato, a painterly technique of depicting air invented by Leonardo, while in exile, where he left in 1972. In the Soviet Union, he was more of a follower of surrealism. But one day his photographer friend John Stuart told him, “Look, you're a fine artist, but you're doing some nonsense. Why don't you just paint reality? Those objects around you”. And from about this point we can count the era of the new Kuper.