Mikhail Roginsky

Original canvas, slightly slack in the stretcher. There is a layer of light surface dirt and lines of craquelure in places. Unframed.
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Though little approved of in 1960s, Mikhail Roginsky became one of the principal artists of Moscow art scene. He was one of the founders of the modern national art language, with its laconic brevity of means, conceptual distinctiveness and inner expression. Rejecting the Moscow art tradition, Roginsky's genre painting is often filled with deep, existential emotions and the wisdom gained of life experience.

In 1987 Roginsky emigrated to Paris, and it was then that he began to paint probably his most genuine and, at the same time, least flattering images of Moscow and the Soviet Union. His paintings, showing people with half-erased faces and distorted proportions, take us back to the 'idyllic' 1960s.

Depicted in dark and gloomy colours, Coal Miners evokes nostalgia and sympathy for Soviet times and at the same time makes the viewer consider the history of the humankind. The modern tool of quotation gives the work a propaganda-like feel and emphasizes the absurdity of miners' lives: the now forgotten heroes of the Soviet era.