Yuri Dyshlenko

DYSHLENKO DIFFERED FROM THE MAJORITY OF ST.PETERSBURG AVANT-GUARD ARTISTS WITH HIS ABSOLUTE, EXTREME OPENNESS TO NEW ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS, WITH THE VIEW OF AN INTELLECTUAL. HE WAS THE STRUCTURALISTS’ STUDENT WHO LACKED THAT “SNOBBISM OF THE POST-CÉZANNE ERA” THAT IS COMMONLY FELT IN ART BY THE LENINGRAD UNDERGROUND ARTISTS. HE SEEMED TO BE A WHITE CROW IN LENINGRAD, THOUGH HE DIDN’T GET ALONG WITH MOSCOW CONCEPTUALISTS. HIS ARTISTIC SEARCH WAS WIDER AND GREATER, THAN THE SOCIAL ART MOVEMENT THAT WAS DEVELOPING IN THE 70-S. HE DETESTED THE WIDE-SPREAD USE OF SOVIET CLICHÉS, TRYING TO FIND A MORE UNIVERSAL CONTEXT.

Poet Victor Krivulin about Yuriy Dyshlenko

Yuriy Dyshlenko is a nonconformist, one of the key figures of the Leningrad art scene. In his art Yuriy combined abstraction with references to the figurative painting, constructing a wholly new artistic reality. In the end of the 1960-1970-s, the artist delved in analytical and geometric searches. He followed art discoveries of the European Art Nouveau and post-Cubism art movements – Purism, Dadaism, Surrealism. As many artists of the epoch, he tried coming up with scientific and technological basis of his art experiments. His contemporaries thought of his work as futuristic and of him as an artist who sees the upcoming 21st century as pre-apocalyptic in a sense. Dyshlenko’s artworks are in the Russian Museum, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Jersey.