Evgenii Mikhnov-Voitenko

If one were asked to identify a "classic" abstract painter among those active in the unofficial art worlds of Leningrad and Moscow before perestroika, Evgenii Mikhnov-Voitenko (1932–1988) would likely be the first choice. In part, the exercise reduces to a question of generation: as an artist born in the early 1930s, he matured under the full weight of a repressive regime while experiencing also the shock of discovery-of suppressed histories and new contacts with the European, American, and Russian avant-gardes (both historical and contemporary). Equally significant, perhaps, is Mikhnov's distance from the doubts and historical revisionism of the late 1980s. When he died in 1988 of throat cancer, postmodernist art criticism had barely begun (in Russia) to question the values of historical
priority, originality, and individual creative genius that artists like Mikhnov had vested in those life-defining discoveries.

The exhibition includes the full spectrum of Mikhnov's oeuvre and is composed solely of paintings housed at the Zimmerli Art Museum. The Dodge Collection contains 134 works by the artist, many of which are painted in tempera on paper. All seven of the museum's paintings in oil on canvas are on view, a figure that is representative of the artist's work in the medium and derives from primarily economic reasons. 

The Dodge Collection is rich in Mikhnov's most characteristic work, painted with a palette knife in the medium of tempera on paper. The artist produced a great quantity of these pieces beginning in the early 1970s and continuing up until his death in 1988.

As the exhibition aims to reveal, his practice resulted in rich visual language and body of work that rewards the viewer over time and in repeated encounters.

Organized by Jane A. Sharp.