Artist-ironist Alexander Kalugin

Aleksander Kalugin is an astonishing artist who astonishes. His work is multi-layered and extraordinary. Critics have called his style fantastic realism, by which they mean that his work cannot be reduced to one definitive style. In both his graphics and paintings, Kalugin is both fantastic and realistic, but in his own, inimitable, Kaluginesque way.

When asked what he considers to be the most crucial component of visual art, Aleksandr Kalugin responded:

«Most important is the world that comes into being on canvas or on paper. When I start working, I do not know what that world will be like. The process of creation itself is most important to me. When you work, you interact with the work — you live. At those moments, time does not exist — you are beyond time, beyond space. It is an absolute and special state. Technique and materials come second.»


Kalugin’s paintings are full of complicated images which tend to bright colors, to the carnivalesque, and to a Biblical, fair-like theatricality, as multi-colored as a quilt. In his graphics, Kalugin is more spontaneous, but also more rigorously logical. In both his graphics and his etchings, the carnival element is clearly essential. Kalugin proves himself a “composer”, who builds his compositions deftly and convincingly… His compositions are not preconceived, but improvised, as the artist states above.

Great master artists of the past usually studied not in institutions of higher education but in the studios of professional masters. So it is with Kalugin, who, in 1964-65, thanks to his older brother, the folklorist and writer Victor Kalugin, found himself working with the out-of-favor artist, Vladimir Vaisberg, whose studio was under the umbrella of the Union of Architects. According to Aleksander, Vaisberg was a superb graphic artist, who could sketch a model brilliantly in ten to fifteen seconds. Driven by his powerful creative temperament, Aleksandr developed his talent very quickly — even after only five to six lessons, he made tremendous progress. After studying with Vaisberg, Kalugin did not want to attend art school. Having acquired his own technique, he did not want to give it up. His natural gifts then received their final polishing in 1970-71, when he studied with Boris Kozlov. Aristocratic by temperatment, Kozlov was inclined to be a dictatorial teacher, rather like Foma Opiskin, a character from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story “The Village of Stepanchikovo”. His students were intimidated by his sudden mood changes. However, this did not prevent the freedom-loving Kalugin from accomplishing what he had set out to do under Kozlov — become a true professional.


In the early 1970s, Kalugin joined the underground wave of nonconformist art, where he acquired a Western audience. Eventually his works found their way into the famous collection of George Kostakis, who introduced Anatoly Zverev, a classic avant-garde artist, to the world. During this period, Kalugin became friends with Byron Lindsey, an American professor of Russian, who organized Kalugin’s first “in abstentia” exhibition at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, USA, in 1972. The largest collection of Kalugin’s early works are also in the USA, at the Grinnell College museum, in the state of Iowa. The Zimmerli Museum of Contemporary Art, in New Jersey, USA, also owns more than twenty of Kalugin’s works.

Kalugin not only participated in unofficial exhibitions, he also helped other nonconformist artists set up exhibitions in private apartments. For his first exhibition of this sort, he showcased his work along with that of Vladimir Piatnitsky and Sergei Bordachev, renowned artists of the Russian avant-garde. On September 29, 1974 Kalugin joined others in Izmailovsky Park to openly exhibit their work — art forbidden, or “not recommended”, by Soviet authorities. One event taken from Kalugin’s biography illustrates the spirit of the time. The day after the open-air exhibition, a policeman arrested him and took him to the local police station. There Kalugin was made to sign a document stating that he would never create abstract art. Although he had never worked in abstract art, his sense of protest led Kalugin to take it up.


Following the Izmailovsky Park exhibit, Kalugin began his career in psychiatric hospitals. As a dissident artist, he was incarcerated in over 30 hospitals, where authorities forcibly tried to cure him of his individual way of viewing the world. Under the influence of his older brother and his friends, Kalugin became a human rights activist. He participated in anti-government demonstrations as well as in hunger strikes with “otkazniki”, i.e., persons denied their right to emigrate from the USSR. In 1987, Aleksandr and his wife Tamara became active participants in the production of the human rights newspaper, “Express-Khronika”.

Throughout the difficult period of the 1970s-1980s, Kalugin’s wife Tamara remained his major source of support. She continually attempted to prove that her husband was not mentally ill, but a man suffering for his convictions. She always managed to persuade doctors to allow her husband to practice his art. And thus, even in the hospital, Kalugin continued to work. Many years later, Aleksander and Tamara encountered their old friend Boris Bych, a well-known abstract artist, who recalled how he and Tamara had visited the incarcerated artist. As they entered the hospital basement, where he had been permitted to paint, Aleksander greeted them with paint-spattered hands. During his incarcerations, Kalugin drew a remarkable series of portraits of patients and medical personnel.

Likewise, Kalugin drew his graphic “To Freedom with a Clean Conscience” while in the infamous Butyrka Prison. The graphic, which depicts a person sitting in a cell, was reproduced in the West in 1980 in a book entitled “The Artist By Himself”. In this volume, the émigré art critic Igor Golomstok wrote an article about the fate and work of the artist-prisoner, who was unacknowledged in the USSR. A few years later, in 1985, some of Kalugin’s works were used as illustrations in the book, “Two Lives — One Russia”, written by the American journalist Nicholas Daniloff.


Kalugin was not allowed to go abroad for “security” reasons — even though Kalugin’s official occupation was that of janitor (a usual profession for dissident intellectuals), a profession that no one in his right mind would associate with state security. In 1990, however, after Soviet ideological pressure abated, Kalugin made his first visit to the West, to Switzerland, to be present at an exhibition of his work Kalugin’s fate brought him many trials, which strengthened his will and developed his talent. What were the manifestations of his talent? Which of his works are an essential part of the history of the Russian avant-garde? Let us examine, as an example, his long-famous work, “Russian Troika” (1984). Against the background of a monastery, which resembles the Trinity Sergius Monastery, slowly moves a troika, driven by a peasant in a sheepskin coat. Bolshevik activists, the new masters of life, are seated in the troika. Over their heads, in keeping with the post-revolutionary era, waves a banner that reads “Religion is the Opium of the People!”. This work, like many of Kalugin’s graphics, especially the early ones, are close in style to “lubok”, or early Russian caricature drawings. In keeping with the “lubok” tradition, Kalugin creates intentional optical deformations. Thus, in “Russian Troika”, one notices that the trees are smaller than the troika. The size of the chapel in the foreground is also changed. As a result, the viewer perceives everything else differently — the Red Army soldier at the barrier, the country girl, who hurries away, looking back in fear. By adopting this tradition from the past, Kalugin follows in the steps of “lubok” painters, who drew on the practices of Old Slavonic icon painting and Church Slavonic manuscript illumination.

While the Kalugin admirers who have identified the “lubok” element are correct, it must be said that Kalugin uses “lubok” not for stylization, but for realism — like a well-defined, contrastive dream. In general, a subtle dreaminess, the effect of waking dreams, characterizes Kalugin’s work. Yet the artist says, “I do not like to use dreams outright. I am more interested in life. I consider the images of Salvador Dali artificial, and those of Max Ernst, which lie on the border between the real and the surreal, more natural”.


Another discernible element of Kalugin’s style is the use of symbolism. One need only look at “Russian Troika” to see, suspended in the sky, the free-standing image of an Old Slavonic god. Perhaps it is a wooden Perun (the god of thunder of the Eastern Slavs). Like a symbol of paganism, a religion lost in the past, he hovers over a shaken, revolutionary Russia, reminding the viewer of the religion lost under the rule of the atheistic Bolsheviks. But perhaps Bolsheviks are the new pagans? The social symbolism is multilayered. “Russian Troika” is not primitive propaganda or poster art; it reflects an entire historical era. It even incorporates humor: a Red Army soldier in a Budennyi cap (from the 1920s) rides a wooden horse. Thus, we understand the naïve, childlike character of any revolution, which, having run its course, brings to power another cohort of bureaucrats. Kalugin also uses another, even more symbolic motif, which is repeated throughout many of his works — the image of a leafless tree branch against the background of a full moon. This image not only creates a sense of the non­accidental character of what is happening but also conveys a sense of the unity of earth and sky. In addition to the artist’s use of symbols and humor, in Kalugin’s “Russian Troika” we see deep irony. These features have placed him at the forefront of the best-known artist­nonconformists of the Soviet period. Aleksandr Kalugin, if you will, is an artist­ironist.

A joyful and wise irony characterizes his “Russia — the Motherland of Elephants” (1987), in which an elephant appears, having smashed through the roof of a typical peasant’s hut, just as a baby chick breaks through an eggshell. Everything is absolutely realistic, the peasant’s hut, the wood beams, the rafters, the roof, all realistic. An elephant was shoved into a wooden home, but breaks out… But what kind of joker would shove an elephant into such a place, would torment him so? That’s unknown. Clearly, life itself drove the elephant there, “circumstances”… One might, in essence, meet an elephant in Russia in any number of contexts. The image may come from an anecdote that circulated widely in the USSR, whereby the Soviet people invented every good thing known to humanity, including the elephant. People lived an absurd, red-bannered life. Those who did not agree with “the leading and guiding line of our native Communist party” — people including the artist Aleksander Kalugin — were placed in jails and subjected to forced treatment in psychiatric hospitals. The absurdities of the past should have remained in the past. Yet many persist to this day. Russian life has always contained an element of the absurd. Acted out in a drunken haze, unpredictable, daredevil, paradoxical, and shocking behavior still occurs, surprising even those involved… Thus, in the graphic, a toy bear plays the balalaika for an elephant. But perhaps it’s not for the elephant, but for himself? Perhaps he’s not playing, but some children placed him there with a balaika… A saucepan with a long handle surrealistically looms over the elephant. It seems so well-placed that one might not realize that the elephant itself, straining to free itself from the house, crashing through the roof, threw it up into the air. And in the background floats a completely lyrical bird house.


A similar sense of the semi-realistic, humorous absurd can be found in the 1920s and 30s in the writings of Daniil Kharms and Konstantin Vaginov. In the 1970s and 80s, this humorous absurd was embraced by the writer and philosopher Yurii Mamleev, who was forced into emigration. In Mamleev’s work, an elephant or some other animal, like an “imaginary toad”, can be found in a communal apartment. While we do not claim direct influence, we believe that both writer and artist reflect their times. Both Yurii Mamleev and Aleksander Kalugin know how to trouble, if not horrify, the indifferent, sleepy, well-fed world.

Aleksandr Kalugin’s work, “The Flight to the Monastery” (1981), is stylistically typical and thematically significant. This work was used as the cover illustration for two American editions of Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”. Though not intended as an illustration of the novel, the graphic represents the everyday reality of the novel’s main characters: snow­covered dilapidated houses in Russian backstreets and alleys, the drinking of beer and port wine. Everyday, ordinary, real details, yet full of symbolism: a man stands on a roof, looking through a telescope, symbol of Russia’s many home-grown amateur astronomers, including the breed that wants “to bring heaven down to earth”, i.e., materialists. A traffic light with “a brick” — signifying that cars should stop. Ordinary, unusual — more than a traffic indicator… In the background, two figures fly above the buildings towards an old monastery whose contours are clearly seen against a full moon. Once again we encounter the images of tree branches against the backdrop of a full moon. One figure represents a peasant; the other, in a suit, seems to belong to the intelligentsia. Both fly towards the moonlit monastery, to a distant world beyond the clouds — a fantastic, religious, and legendary world reminiscent of the mystical city of Kitezh. Yet the monastery resembles the Solovetsky monastery, which, since the 1920s, has been a notorious labor camp. It is thus hard to tell whether these two figures are flying to a place of mystical and spiritual enlightenment or whether they have left their everyday lives for the suffering and martyrdom of prison.


Many years later, in 2001, Kalugin develops the theme of “Flight” in his inimitable manner in the painting “Solovetsky Monastery”. Built in the distant and desolate Solovetsky archipelago during the 15th century under the spiritual guidance of Saints Zosima, Savvatii, and Herman, the monastery became one of the best known and revered Orthodox shrines in Northern Russia. During the Soviet period, the Solovetsky monastery, as mentioned, was turned into a death camp. Many noblemen, scientists, tsarist generals and officers, literary men and artists were sent to that isolated spot, among them the famous theologian, Father Pavel Florensky. In the 1920’s the camp even had its own printing facilities, which published postcards as well as a literary magazine containing works written by some of the convicts. In the painting we can see the white-washed monastery walls, behind which stand the cupola and the church. On the waters of the inlet, a small boat heads toward the monastery. On the water stand the two symmetrical iconic figures of its saintly founders, one resembling Saint Peter. High above the monastery hovers a winter hat, formerly prison garb. All these images are shown in fragments, as though we are seeing layers of fresco superimposed atop one another. What is the significance of this initially strange strategy? Perhaps it reflects something that is not whole, the splinters of a contemporary view of life, the fragmentariness of memory, its forgetfulness and inability to reflect the world in its entirety, with all its colors. The strategy reflects a philosophical protest, only hinted at in Kalugin’s early graphics, but manifest in his late graphics and characteristic of his late oil paintings.


We must still discuss one of the earlier drawings, later converted into an etching, entitled “The Newspaper Reader”. Kalugin drew this work in 1984, while incarcerated in Butyrka prison. Currently in the Moscow museum “Memorial”, “The Newspaper Reader” has been reproduced several times and was included in the catalogue of Kalugin’s works prepared for his exhibition in Grinnell College (Iowa, USA), which also printed reproductions of “Flight to the Monastery” and “Russia­Motherland of Elephants”, among others.

In “The Newspaper Reader” (1984), the eponymous character sits with a copy of “Pravda” (the official organ of the Central Committee of the USSR) in his hands. The reader, however, is a bear-like being. His reading glasses underscore the bear’s resemblance to Leonid Brezhnev, the ultimate representative of the period of “stagnation” — a time when empty Party rhetoric reigned. Such ursine managerial cadres are still alive today, no matter whether they continue to be members of the Communist party or not. Out of the reader’s window, we see a provincial town square complete with liquor store, ice cream seller, and strolling couple. The woman holds an umbrella… However, in the center of the square appears the absurd image of a martyr being burnt at the stake — an image straight out of a medieval graphic. Faithful to himself, Kalugin thus transverses epochs, creating tragic, subtle analogies. It’s impossible to count the number of human lives consigned to the flames by assiduous «Pravda» readers.

In 2002, in a work entitled “Almost a Holiday”, Kalugin returns to the small world of provincial Russia. In this graphic, we find a carousel with adults on it. There is a northern hunter carrying a rifle, Father Frost with a sack of presents, a man in a green coat playing a golden trumpet, and two young people, all of them seated on carousel horses… and elephants. Kalugin wouldn’t be Kalugin, however, if he did not introduce an ironic moment of “levitation” into the picture — in the air, flying towards the carousel, a waitress in peasant headdress and Snow Maiden costume carries a tray with a bottle of champagne and a goblet. Down on earth in felt boots, a small girl with a shovel chats with a snowman… All this occurs in the courtyard of a typical Russian town — around New Year’s, judging by the small, decorated fir tree standing near the building. On top of the tree, at the center of the painting, hangs a single ornament. A peaceful and lightly ironic painting which also features the fragmented pieces of colorful frescos, the “scratched through” patches, with which the artist loves to sharpen his representations, stirring the viewer’s perception, though not as intensely as in his works from 1990-2000.

This illusion of a fresco peeking out from behind the picture creates a feeling of expanded space. One can see this effect in his painting “Pine Tree on the Shore of the Unzha River” (2000), which depicts a large tree whose exposed roots jut dramatically out of the ground. This phenomenon occurs in nature, as such pine trees can be seen on the sea shore of Tuapsa and in other places, where there is a sandy shore and wind….

One of Kalugin’s most captivating and dynamic canvas is “The Encounter”. Here the subject — a cock fight — particularly justifies the brightly-colored patches of light and the ragged spots of color superimposed on the image. The noise of the battle is given representation by musical instruments — the trumpet and the double bass, a drum stick and a cymbal — which are drawn into the picture with life and originality. The background is very conventional — with the outlines of simple windows barely sketched in.

The monumental character of Kalugin’s “Rostov the Great” (2002) greatly impressed many of the artist’s viewers. In this festive work, the artist succeeds in making the ordinary occurrence of a fish on a tray appear like a recurrent miracle. Lying on a colorful Rostov tray with one eye open, the fish conveys a sense of the hosts’ hospitality. Above all, however, the fish is beautiful in and of itself. Kalugin’s creations have an element, a shadow, a ray of beauty. They do not look like rational experiments on a canvas but like the fruits of artistic inspiration….

Special mention must be made here of “Entrance to the Subway” (2000), a sui generis version of the Tower of Babel. Executed with brusque strokes, the gigantic tower narrowing towards the top is covered with scaffolding. In the foreground, people enter and emerge from a subway station. The M sign, so familiar to Muscovites, can be seen above the fenced­off entrance. This is Moscow as it really is. The pompous, unwieldly buildings erected under Stalin look like Towers of Babel. The people viewed against the background of subway and abstract skyscraper under construction seem to inhabit both sky and earth indiscriminately. Among fresco-like patches, their small figures are seen moving along the Tower’s perimeter and on the street, moving towards the Tower which sits in the midst of ordinary, undistinguished buildings.

Kalugin’s two works “The Shaman” (1994) and “The Shaman-Nanaika Maria Fyodorovna Geiker” (2002) stand out from the rest both in subject and in use of color. Among the indigenous peoples of the Far North, the shaman has formidable magic power. While communicating with astral spirits, he beats magic rhythms on his tambourine. Both works feature tambourines covered with totemic symbols. The European mind cannot fathom shamanic powers, which can heal wounds or influence weather. Shamans have hypnotic powers. Once a shaman led an unbeliever into his hut, where he saw a bear approaching him; he sensed the smell from his maw. In terror, the man’s hair stood on end… and the bear disappeared — an illusion, summoned by the shaman, who belongs heart and soul to Nature. The shaman divines Nature’s rhythms and distills them into the rhythm of his tambourine.

Before the advent of Christianity, shamans existed throughout the world — there being little difference between those from Siberia, Africa or America. To this day, shamans exist in Russia among the peoples of Siberia. The Nanaitsy are one of the Siberian peoples. Shamanism is asexual: there is no difference between a male or a female shaman. The shamanic gift is passed down from one generation to the next. It is widely believed that when shamans go into a trance, they are released from their bodies, and their souls freely mingle in both upper and lower worlds. They are regarded as mediators between the real world and the world beyond. After Russia colonized Siberia, the Orthodox Church fought against the region’s paganism. The local populations were baptized by force, and newborns were given Christian names. This explains why the female shaman in the painting bears the Russian name of Maria Fyodorovna. In these two canvases, we sense that the artist Kalugin was attracted by the mysteriousness of shamanism, by that pre-historic force which eludes all scientific formulas and rational explanation. We find two more shamans in Kalugin’s work: in his graphic “A Noisy Guest” (2000), a shaman appears semi-realistically against the background of a modern European church, and his painting “Morning Stroll” (2001), a shaman, surrounded by clouds and camomiles, furiously beats his tambourine…

Kalugin’s “Lavish Dinner” (2002) is one of his most comforting works. In general, Kalugin’s works often convey a sense of coziness — even in those where the grotesque or ironic predominate, where the absurd reigns. In “Lavish Dinner”, the pine tree full of birds is replete with attributes of the human side of Soviet life. It is decorated with labels from bottles of lemon vodka, a pack of cheap cigarettes, and other small pieces of reality. From their midst the faces of historical and contemporary people flash through. Despite the nearly unrestrained disorder of its fragments, it has an inner organization of clear esthetic value, reflecting intuitive harmony and fine artistic taste.


Kalugin won particular acclaim for his graphic work entitled “Realist-Storyteller Romanov­Mikhailov”, later redone as an etching (1985). The drawing reflects the world of a person who was loved without exception by everyone who knew him — Victor Mikhailov, a man who made a legend of himself. He is often the subject of nostalgic conversations because he was able to turn his own life into many. Invention, fantasy and reality organically coexisted in his person. The bohemian atmosphere of the 1960s-80s facilitated his creativity. Mikhailov lived in the Ostozhenko district in the very heart of Moscow. His apartment was always full: artists, poetics, art critics, musicians, and actors all congregated there. One could go there at any time of day or night — the subway was around the corner. Meals at Victor Sergeevich’s thus could last for months. Conversation on all possible topics never ended, making it difficult to determine what was drunken raving, what was artistic fantasy, and what was reality. The apartment itself was stuffed with old furniture, icons, books, and paintings… The only clear space was the table, around which everyone gathered, and the bed, where slept those no longer able to sit. Two of Mikhailov’s most frequent guests were Anatoly Zverev and Dmitry Plavinsky — artists now considered Russian classics. Then, however, they were young and drunk, in no way resembling “classics”. In Kalugin’s graphic, Plavinsky is depicted on the left, Zverev on the right, on the shelf above is the young pioneer Vika, who became one of Mikhailov’s wives… Zverev died long ago; in Moscow there is even a museum named after him. Plavinsky lives in New York, where he published his memoirs, which tell stories of Mikhailov, whose funeral was attended by all Moscow. In his graphic, Kalugin tries to tell part of Mikhailov’s story.

One might well ask whether the many works presented here belong to the avant-garde? As far as their historical and social backgrounds are concerned, they do. However, they are not categorically related to post­modernism, which places greater emphasis on citation. Here we are dealing not so much with pure citation, but with a fragmented view of reality, which is highly independent and individual.
Since 1990, Kalugin has had many exhibitions throughout Russia and abroad. Starting in 1990, he has been cooperating with the Swiss Gallery of Graphic Art. He also became a member of the International Center of Fantastic Art in Chateau Gruyeres, Switzerland. In 1996 at Grinnell College (USA) Kalugin lectured about modern art and etching techniques. In 1998 at the International Festival of Modern Art held in Florida, he was awarded the First and Second Prizes in the competitions for graphics and painting. As one might expect, his international activities have continued to be very extensive.


Aleksander Kalugin has also worked in film. In 2002, he drew a series of graphics for the television film of the novel “Azazel”, written by Boris Akunin, a popular contemporary writer. In 2005, he worked as a graphic artist on the documentary film “Pilgrimage to the Eternal City”, directed by Vladimir Khotinenko.

To demonstrate the attention that both Kalugin’s graphics and paintings have gained from well-known theoreticians, we are including an extensive citation from Sergei Kuskov’s article “On the Work of Aleksandr Kalugin”: “On one hand this artist willingly travels into "the illusion’ of fantastic inventions. He brings in the mythologized past and erases the boundaries between the every-day and the magical, which allows us to speak of his neo-romantic predilections. On the other hand, his critique of socially important issues is no less palpable. His work abounds in the characteristic traits of everyday Soviet reality in all its unattractive, frequently grotesquely absurd manifestations, such as tacky propaganda, everyday lack of comfort, the total loss of individuality among the masses, and so forth. Fantastic by force of their reality, the symptoms of a realized anti­utopia find their proper place in the image system of his graphics, paintings, and engravings. This world is conveyed through the power of his art which includes traditional folkloric humor in a deeply modern interpretation. On the level of more current representational art, he makes use of the folkloric grotesque of Russian lubok art as well as the ironic phantasmagoria of Hieronymous Bosch. This is all done through the magical prism of neo­surrealism, the alchemy of images introduced into the context of the artist’s deeply personal mythology. Different levels, planes, and slices mutually penetrate, overlay, illuminate, and generate new contexts. Retrospective and nostalgic images of past epochs hang on in the spiritual life of Holy Russia. The opaque contours of monasteries and cities reminiscent of the fairy tale Kizhi, landscapes associated with the hills and towns — all appear as though on the same plane, slices of a complex system of images. Among traditional references one can note the free play with the bestiaries of medieval art — fantastic monsters, transformed in the laboratory of surrealism, reveal their mythological roots in unconscious archetypes and enter into a strange unified existence with contemporary characters, reveal themselves under a layer of observations from everyday life, grow in a space whose one pole is the day-to-day and whose other pole is a mysterious hyperreality”.

One can affirm that if every talented artist is unique in his own way, then Kalugin is interesting and unique in his own way. Kalugin’s works embody the kind of freedom accessible only to those who have managed to find their own path in art. Aleksander Kalugin occupies an honored place in modern Russian art. Almighty time, the most rigorous judge of all, will undoubtedly reaffirm his role in the artistic and social history of Russia.

Stanislav Aidinian