| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Vladimir Kush | ||
| Date of birth | 29 March 1965 | ||
| Place of birth | Moscow, Russia | ||
Vladimir Kush, born in Moscow, 1965 is a Russian surrealist painter and sculptor. He prefers to define his art as metaphorical realism rather than surrealism.
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Kush was born in 1965 in Moscow and began to draw and show his artistic ability at the age of three or four. His father, Oleg, encouraged his natural talent at an early age. He also did his best to provide his son with books of romantic travel by hard to get (and sometimes banned) authors such as Jules Verne, Jack London and Herman Melville. At the age of seven, Kush began attending art school in Russia. The first half of his day was in regular school, doing normal lessons, and the second half of the day spent in art classes until nine PM. Kush entered the Moscow Art Institute at seventeen, and a year later, began two years of compulsory military service. However he was soon commissioned to paint propagandistic posters, rather than perform the functions of regular infantry.
Kush states that his style has been influenced by these major artists: Monet, Botticelli, Bosch, Van Gogh, Durer, Schinkel, Vermeer and Dali. Becoming weary of the Cézanne painting style which he focused on at art school, Kush then went to surreal images as a teenager and painted his first surreal image at the age of fourteen. Kush experimented with various styles of impressionism after reading a book on works of Salvador Dalí, one of the artists whom he found highly influential in earlier and in fact, later life. Kush was also strongly influenced by his father, a mathematician who believed that his son's realistic paintings showed the artist's professional skill. His father believed they drew the audience in to accept the impossible images and explore the different levels of meaning since they were painted realistic enough to see the metaphors contained in them.
It was in 1987 that he became professional, selling his paintings and exhibiting them in the Union of Artists. It was also around that time when he was invited to paint a series of portraits for the U.S. embassy staff. However he was forced to reduce his work on portraits after the KGB became suspicious of his involvement with the Americans due to the books which he read during his military service.
Three years later, (1990) Kush showed his works in Germany together with two other Russian artists, he then visited Los Angeles for an exhibition and decided to stay in the United States. He claims "This was the beginning of his American odyssey".
In 1991 his dream of becoming a well known surrealism artist became something more of a reality. For a short time after his move to America, he was able to rent a small garage in Los Angeles to paint. He sold his work for food and rent. After a year or so in LA, Kush became frustrated, unable to find a place to show his work. He then began painting portraits for people on the pier in Santa Monica to earn extra money. With his savings, he purchased a ticket to Maui. It took him around ten years to open his first gallery in the US, as his artworks were first liked in Asia rather than America. It is clear from most of his paintings that he is inspired by the pale blue Hawaiian skies where he lives and also the cold, dark winter months of Moscow, where he grew up.
Kush owns four art galleries in the United States, one in Lahaina, Hawaii, one in Laguna Beach, California and two in Las Vegas, Nevada (The Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood and The Forum Shops at Caesars).