(Moscow 1966–lives and works a.o. in Moscow)

God of Cosmos. 2002.

Watercolour on firm wove paper.

Signed and dated upper right: P. Pepperstein, 2002, also signed in cyrillic.

114.5 × 122 cm

Provenance:
- Galerie Elisabeth Kaufmann, Zurich.
- Purchased from the above by the present owner, since then private collection England.

Pavel Pepperstein was born in Moscow in 1966, the son of the writer Irina Pivovarova and the painter Viktor Pivorarov. From 1985 to 1987 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In the year of his graduation he founded the artist group “Medical Hermeneutics”, with Sergeji Anufriev, Yuri Leiderman and Vladimir Fedorov, who, with the fall of Communism and the resulting opening up to the West, reflected on their own art and culture of the East. A great influence on his work was that of Ilja Kabakov. However, Pepperstein does not devote himself exclusively to fine art, but also works as an art critic, designer, poet and curator. He is one of the most influential artists of the Russian art scene. In 1994 he was visiting professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt; in 1997–1998 he received a scholarship from the Akademie Solitude in Stuttgart. Pavel Pepperstein lives in Moscow and Tel Aviv.

The combination of Russian and antique legends, but also the linking of supremacist motifs with those of Pop Art afford him access to an unbelievably rich pictorial language, which he combines partly in the form of complex compositions but also as scattered images, or storytelling. With a light hand, Pepperstein reveals a surprising, surrealist and almost mythical world which leaves all possibilities of interpretation open to the viewer. Playfully he questions the universal canons of art, literature, politics and the media.

In addition to numerous group and solo shows, in 2004 Pavel Pepperstein showed at the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale. In 2009 he was invited to take part in the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2014 he was one of the participants of the 10th Manifesta in St. Petersburg. In the same year he was awarded the prestigious Kandinsky Prize.

The medium of drawing plays a major role in Pepperstein’s oeuvre. The three large-format works presented here clearly demonstrate his range, both of motifs and execution. In one drawing he shows individual flowers distributed over the page, some rendered realistically, some abstracted, creating a scattered effect. The second drawing, on the other hand, appears to tell a story: a woman stands at the edge of a black hole, the core of which glows brightly. Is she being drawn in, or have the two motifs absolutely nothing to do with each other? The third drawing is a compact, colourful composition, consisting on the one hand of snake-shaped motifs, which stretch across the page, and on the other hand of round forms, some of which are distorted to the point where they become star-like shapes.