Vladimir Ovchinnikov

Alexander Glezer Collection
Roman Tabakman Collection
Palladian Collection

Montgeron, Musée Russe en Exile, 1976
Paris, Palais des Congrès, Contemporary Russian Art, 1977
Paris, Musée de Luxembourg, Unnofficial Russian Art, 1978
Venice, Biennale of International Art, 1978; Bellinzona, La Biennale di Bellinzona, New Russian Art, 1978
Jersey City, Museum of Soviet Unofficial Art, Inaugural Exhibition, 1980
Washington DC, United States Congress, Unofficial Art from the Soviet Union, 1983
Hanover, Dartmouth College, Contemporary Russian Art, 1983
Arlington, University of Arlington, Unofficial Russian Art, 1983
Meerbusch, Meerbuscher Kultursommer, Unofficial Russian Art, 1984
Lancaster, Franklin and Marshall College, Soviet Art in Exile, 1984
Jersey City, Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, 1986
New York, West-Orange Cultural Center, Unoffical Russian Art, 1987
Paris, Musée national d'art moderne Centre George Pompidou, 1989
Paris, Galerie Marie-Therese, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, 1992

Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, Jersey City, 1986, illustrated on the cover
For a related work (Shuvalovo Station, 1978, oil on canvas), see Alla Rosenfeld and Norton T. Dodge, eds., From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, New York and London: Thames and Hudson and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 1995, p. 120, plate 5:15
Mikhail Guerman and Tatyana Yurleva, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Museum, 1996
Regina Khidekel, "Traditionalist Rebels: Nonconformist Art in Leningrad," in Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde, New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 1998, pp. 129-47
Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Galerie Marie-Therese, Paris, 1992

Vladimir Ovchinnikov was a leading member of the Leningrad unofficial art movement beginning in the 1960s, when he started associating with other underground artists. He was involved in many of the movement's landmark events, including the Exhibition of Workmen Artists held at the Hermitage Museum in 1964, which was open for only two days before being closed by the KGB.

Ovchinnikov's scenes are drawn from the life of the Leningrad suburbs. His distinctive, simplified, naïve style employs heavy-bodied tubular figures. Fusing Russian subject matter with myth and religion, Ovchinnikov presents personages from the Old and New Testaments in combination with figures from contemporary Soviet society.

In this work, set in a suburban train station, an ordinary Soviet citizen, who is probably a watch guard at the station, reacts with equal indifference to the transport of tanks and to the presence of the angels on the tracks. The artist's juxtaposition of the celestial realm with everyday Soviet life comments on the spirituality--or lack thereof--in Soviet society. This work emphasizes the unshakable apathy that permeated Soviet society during the period of stagnation.