Oscar RABINE

Né à Moscou, Oscar Rabine  (1928 – 2018) apprend le métier de peinture aux côtés dbevgueni Kropivnitski.

Born in Moscow, Oscar Rabin (1928–2018) learned the craft of painting alongside Evgeny Kropivnitsky.

In the 1950s, he moved to the suburbs of Moscow with his wife and earned his living as a railway foreman, labourer and then commercial illustrator. He devoted himself entirely to painting from 1958 when the Lianosovo Group was created.

A true figurehead of artists committed to freedom of expression, Oscar Rabine belongs to the nonconformist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

A great advocate of ‘unofficial’ art, in 1974 he organised the famous ‘bulldozer’ open-air exhibition in Moscow. This attempt to exhibit works without censorship was swept aside by the authorities, the works were confiscated and Oscar Rabine was subsequently stripped of his nationality in 1978.

Deported, Oscar Rabin settled in Paris with his family, where he became a free artist, independent of political movements and gained worldwide recognition.

The Russian Ambassador to France finally gave him back his passport in 2006, he received the Innovation Prize in Moscow and exhibited at the Pushkin Museum in 2007. Later, Oscar Rabin, a true icon, was awarded the Order of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts.

” In my painting, I first experience the pleasure of the process itself, mixing and laying down the colours, enjoying their brightness and darkness, their subtle and broad strokes, their smell. Then I want to express sadness, happiness, hate, anger, love, thoughts about life. I want to capture life and communicate it through my own feelings. To achieve this, for the symbols, I use normal objects around me. Their meaning in the painting is different from that of real life.” Oscar Rabine