Pyotr BELENOK 1938 — 1991Петро БЕЛЕНОК • Петр БЕЛЕНОКPetr Belenok was a nonconformist artist who masterfully explored the possibilities of collage in the early 1970s. In 1967, having graduated from the Kiev Art Institutes department of sculpture, Belenok moved to Moscow. There he became a member of the group of unofficial artists that had formed around the studio of Oscar Rabin. Belenok often earned his living by producing busts of Lenin. In his own time he created highly expressive semi-abstract and phantasmagoric compositions that included figurative elements. Belenok combined collages of figures cut out from various magazines and miniaturized in an endless space with a rapid brushstroke typical of Abstract Expressionism. Belenok’s work is related to Cosmism, a philosophical and cultural movement in Russia in the early twentieth century whose main proponents were Nikolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Vladimir Vernadsky. Referring to his work that suggests cataclysmic forces and alienation, Belenok explained: “I am not interested in the minute observations of life; I observe the world and its problems from a detached position in space.” |
