Alexander Kosolapov, b.1943

The Collection of the Artist
The Collection of Alexander Glezer
The Palladian Collection

Montgeron, Musée russe en exil, 1976
Paris, Palais des Congrès, Contemporary Russian Art, 1977
Paris, Musée de Luxembourg, Unofficial Russian Art, 1978
Venice, Biennale of International Art, 1978; Bellinzona, La Biennale di Bellinzona, New Russian Art, 1978
Jersey City NJ, Museum of Soviet Unofficial Art, Inaugural exhibition, 1980
Washington DC, United States Congress, Unofficial Art from the Soviet Union, 1983
Hanover NH, Dartmouth College, Contemporary Russian Art, 1983
Arlington TX, University of Arlington, Unofficial Russian Art, 1983
Meerbusch, Meerbuscher Kultursommer, Unofficial Russian Art, 1984
Lancaster PA, Franklin and Marshall College, Soviet Art in Exile, 1984
New York NY, West-Orange Cultural Center, Unofficial Russian Art, 1987
Paris, Musée national d'art moderne Centre George Pompidou, 1989
Vystavka kollektsii Aleksandra Glezera, Ex.Cat. Moscow: State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts/Museum of Private Collections, 1995, p.90 (illustrated)

Alexander Kosolapov is a major representative of the Sots Art movement, which featured satirical treatments of Soviet symbols, Socialist Realist art, Communist Party slogans, and Soviet ideological mass production. Influenced by Dada and Russian absurdist poetry of the 1920s, Kosolapov frees images from their traditional associations.

From 1962 to 1968, Kosolapov was trained as a monumental sculptor at the Stroganov Institute of Art and Design in Moscow. After graduation, he worked as a sculptor until he immigrated to New York in 1975. Between 1981 and 1984, Kosolapov was a co-editor of A-Ya, an important journal of Soviet nonconformist art published by the artist Igor Shelkovsky in France from 1979 to 1987.

Vremena goda (Seasons) is a social commentary on the overproduction of Soviet ideology. The four panels depict the same image of the vast Russian landscape during the different seasons - spring, summer, autumn, and winter - idyllic scenes into which Kosolapov inserted the slogan "Glory to the CPSU" (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) across the sky. The work alludes to the Soviet government's attempt to disseminate and impose Communist ideas onto all spheres of Soviet existence.

During the Brezhnev era, the slogan 'Glory to the Communist Party' was erected in large letters atop public and residential buildings, in factories and next to railway stations throughout the Soviet Union. The letters were made of various materials including glass, wood, metal and neon lights. In common with other works in his oeuvre, Kosolapov seeks to expose the absurdity of the omnipresence of the Communist Party in the lives of Soviet citizens. In these two works, the artist alludes to a short dissident poem "Winter is over, summer has come - we have to thank the Communist Party for the change of seasons".

For Kosolapov to have predicted in the 1970s that the ubiquitous power of the Communist Party would disappear into thin air like a flock of migrating birds is testament to his visionary instinct about the transitory nature of this glory. Indeed, these works were particularly courageous in their criticism because their focus is the most powerful entity in the Soviet Union. Even in the 1970s such visual commentary would certainly have attracted significant attention from the KGB. Now, more than thee decades later, we are privileged to appreciate these four seasonal images as great works of art because of the Zen-like simplicity of their style and the clarity of their underlying message.