Mihail Chemiakin

(1943 - )

5682

Mihail Chemiakin

Apollon - 77

Paris: Arts Graphiques, 1977

354 x 285 mm. 460 pages

Edition: 1,000.

Copy with a dedication by Chemiakin. Many of the artists and poets belonging to the ‘underground’ scenes in Leningrad and Moscow, the so called ‘unofficial artists’, were expelled from the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. Chemiakin   was among the third wave of emigrants that came to Paris in the 1970s. After his arrival in Paris in 1971, Chemiakin took it upon himself to collect and promote the heritage of the Soviet ‘underground’ scene. First he recorded the music of his beloved friend and great Russian bard Vysotsky. The opus magnum of his activities is this anthology which brings together all the important poets and artists living abroad at the time, as well as some who were still in the USSR. Together with his contemporaries Chemiakin included their forerunners, the poets and artists who were instrumental in inspiring his generation. Thus, side-to-side with several texts of Filonov, such as his Sermon chant of universal flowering, one can find the stories and poems of Kuzmin, Remizov and the Oberiu poets Vvedenski and Kharms . For these he designed illustrations. In all over 70 including the cover are by Chemiakin’s hand. The title of the anthology refers to Apollon, the most important art journal of the 1910s. The book was published in early January 1977, after much hard work.

References:

Bass & Lamb 2000, p. 162