| Mihail Chemiakin Михаи́л Михайлович Шемя́кин |
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Mihail Chemiakin (right) with the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev |
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| Birth name | Mihail Chemiakin Circassian Origin |
| Born | 4 May 1943 Moscow, Russia |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Field | Sculpture, Stage designer |
| Works | The Children Victims of Adult Vices (2001) Gofmaniada (Soon) |
| Awards | Order of Friendship Ordre des Arts et des Lettres State Prize of the Russian Federation Prize of the President of the Russian Federation |
Mihail Chemiakin (Russian: Михаи́л Михайлович Шемя́кин, Mikhail Shemyakin, born 4 May 1943, Moscow) is a Russian (ethnic Circassian (Kabardian)) painter, stage designer, sculptor and publisher, and a controversial representative of the nonconformist art tradition of St. Petersburg.
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Chemiakin was born to a military family. His father, a Kabardian from the Caucasus Mountains surnamed Kardanov, had lost his parents and was adopted by a friend of his father's, White Army officer Piotr Chemiakin. The artist's father eventually became a Soviet Army officer. He received one of the first Orders of the Red Banner at the age of thirteen.[1]
Mihail Chemiakin spent his early years in East Germany. His father served in the Army there. His family returned to the Soviet Union in 1957 and he studied at the secondary school of art affiliated with the Il’ya Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In 1961 he was subjected to forced psychiatric treatment to "cure" him of views that did not conform to Soviet norms.
He later got a job at the Hermitage Museum. With his colleagues from the museum he organized an exhibition in 1964, after which the director of the museum was fired and all the participants forced to resign. In 1967 he co-authored with philosopher Vladimir Ivanov a treatise called "Metaphysical Synthesism", which laid out his artistic principles, and created the "St. Petersburg Group" of artists . In 1971 he was exiled from the Soviet Union for failing to conform to Socialist Realism norms.
He settled in France and he published Apollon-77, an almanac of post-Stalinist art, poetry, and photography. He moved to New York in 1981.
His work often features the surreal grotesque, portraying the world as a colourful carnival.
Chemiakin, though Russian-born, signs all his works with his French name, “M. Chemiakine.” The placement of his signature varies from canvas to canvas: either in the lower right or lower left corners, though always on the bottom of the canvas. The titles of his pieces, however, are always in Russian.
In 2001, commissioned by the City of Moscow, he created a monument "Children are the Victims of Adult Vices", a powerful group of sculptures in a park 2000 feet south of the Kremlin, behind the British Ambassador's residence.
Since roughly 2001, he has been working as artistic designer on the upcoming Russian animated feature film Hoffmaniada. In 2001 he directed and designed the new surrealistic-grotesque Marinsky Theatre production of The Nutcracker, which proved controversial (in it, the heroine Masha and the Nutcracker Prince, now married, are presumably killed by being turned into dolls atop a wedding cake at the end, with rats nibbling at the cake and rapidly approaching the top). The Mariinsky also produces the highly popular and more traditional 1934 Vasily Vainonen production of the ballet.
In 2011, he stated during his meeting with Russian prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Brussels that he (Chemiakin) has many projects in the works, such as a center for the artists of the North Caucasus in France [2]; that reflect their culture, in addition, he said that he had finished the sculpture of E. T. A. Hoffmann.[3]
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