Nemukhin, Vladimir
Vladimir Nemukhin was born in Setun, now part of Moscow, in 1925. He started to draw during his school years and often copied paintings from postcards in his spare time. Vladimir went to work at a military plant at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 and was dreaming to become an artist while working his 12-hours shifts. His first teacher was Pyotr Sokolov, a pupil of Ilia Mashkov (1881-1944) and a former assistant to Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935), who introduced Nemukhin to the world of the avant-garde.
Vladimir enrolled in the Central Studio of Fine Arts of the All-Union Central Trade Union Council in 1943 and studied in the class of Leonid Khoroshkevich (1902-1956), a pupil of Konstantin Yuon (1875-1958) who was a director of the Studio. He also attended classes at the Moscow Art College and joined the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists in 1946.
Nemukhin was given a job as an artist at the Soviet Printer publishing house in 1948. He joined the Moscow Association of Artists in 1951 and started to work as a graphic designer and to take part in the annual exhibition of the Association from 1952. Nemukhin became one of the participants of the Lianosovo group of unofficial artists in 1956. He had his first encounter with abstract art exhibited during the 6th World Festival of Youth in Moscow in 1957 and made his first abstract work in 1958. A year later Nemukhin visited famous collector George Costakis (1913-1990) to see his collection of the Russian avant-garde and saw the works of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and others at the American National Exhibition in Moscow.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Vladimir became known among foreign collectors in Moscow who started to buy his art. His gradually moved away from abstract expressionism and adopted the theme of playing cards. He participated in numerous group shows in Russia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the USA. In 1974 Nemukhin took part in the First Autumn Open Air Exhibition, or the Bulldozer Exhibition, which was forcefully closed by the authorities and in the Second Autumn Open Air Exhibition in Izmaylovsky Park in Moscow. He also exhibited at the Beekeeping Pavilion of the Exhibition of All-Union Economic Achievements in 1975 and became a member of the painting section of the Moscow Committee of Graphic Artists in 1976.
Nemukhin had his first retrospective show at the Museum C.A.S.E. of Contemporary Russian Art, Jersey, the USA in 1986 and his first monograph was published by Kenda & Jacob Bar-Gera in 1990. He lived between Germany and Russia from 1993 till 2005. His fame grew, he exhibited all over the world and was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts in 2008.
Nemukhin had his major monograph published in 2012 and had a retrospective show at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2015. His works are present at the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Ludwig Museum on Cologne, the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Fine Art Museum in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and other most important museums in Russia and abroad.
