Genia Chef Explained

Genia Chef (born Evgeny Scheffer, 28 January 1954) is a German-Russian artist (painting, graphic art, installations) living in Berlin. He is considered the founder of Post-Historicism, an art movement that combines elements of traditional painting with aesthetic experiments and interprets current events in the form of a new mythology. Germany.

Biography

Genia Chef was born in 1954 in Aktjubinsk, Kazakhstan, as Evgeny Scheffer. His father, Vladimir Scheffer, was a photojournalist in Moscow.[1] During the World War II he became a victim of Stalinist purges for political reasons and was banished to the Gulag in Kazakhstan. In 1961, five years after Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin's crimes in his Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, Vladimir Scheffer was granted permission for the family to return to Moscow. Chef then studied from 1967 to 1971 at the Art School for Children in Moscow.[2] He was later a student from 1972 to 1977 at Moscow Polygraphic Institute, his professors were Andrei Dmitrijewitsch Gontscharow (graphic art) and Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Zhilinski (painting). Genia Chef received first prize for his M.A. diploma for his illustrations to Edgar Allan Poe. In 1985 Chef moved to West Germany and by invitation of Rudolf Hausner, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria from 1988 to 1993. His professor was Arik Brauer. In 1993 the Academy awarded him its Master of Fine Arts degree, together with its Fueger Gold Prize.

Artistic career

During his studies, Genia Chef began working as an illustrator for the Soviet popular science magazine "Znanie-Sila", which provided a platform for nonconformist artists such as Yulo Sooster, who is considered a precursor of Moscow Conceptualism. Chief editor of the experimental magazine was Yuri Sobolev, a figure of the Moscow underground art scene and author of the animated films "Once upon a time there was a Kosyavin", "Butterfly" and "The Glass Harmonica". Evgeny Scheffer took the artist name Genia Chef when he began in the 1970s-80s to take part in exhibitions of the Moscow nonconformist artists in Malaya Gruzinskaya Street. Here he exhibited with artists like Viktor Pivovarov, Francisco Infante, Anatoly Zveryev, Andrei Roiter, Semyon Faibisovich and Konstantin Khudyakov. After studying at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, Genia Chef lived mainly from book illustrations, as did other nonconformist artists in the USSR of the time (e.g. Ilya Kabakov, Oleg Vassiliev or Erik Bulatov). He illustrated numerous books, including E.A.Poe and American Romantic Tales. During this period his nonconformist painting was influenced by modern Western art movements. After moving to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1985, the artist devoted himself entirely to painting. He spent much time in the Spanish artists' village of Cadaqués, where he developed his post-historical style (Manifesto of Post-Historicism, 1996). At that time Genia Chef created works in which he staged familiar figures from Russian history such as Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky or V.I.Lenin in landscapes of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Often historical figures like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini are depoliticized and portrayed as extras in world history. On the occasion of an exhibition in the former studio of Antonio Canova in Rome, Genia Chef wrote his Manifesto of Neo-Mythology entitled "Viva Canova! (1995). The mixture of post-historical and neo-mythological concepts characterizes his work of this period (ex."The Birth of Myths", 1993). A comprehensive solo exhibition at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg entitled "Glory of a New Century" in 2011 presents numerous key works from both creative periods. In 2013, Genia Chef is represented in the Official Programme of the 55th Venice Biennale (Palazzo Bembo, Collateral Events) with the multimedia installation "Dead House". Here, the artist thematizes the murder of the Russian Tsar's family, which remains an important aspect of his work (several museum exhibitions in Russia, 2017-2019). In 2015, Genia Chef and his friend, the writer Vladimir Sorokin, show the project "Pavilion Telluria" during the 56th Venice Biennale in Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù. Genia Chef's "Archive of Transitional Conditions" consists of more than 200 small-format works that form a kind of visual diary. In their performance on the occasion of the exhibition opening, both artists compete against each other: Genia Chef as knight with lance and shield, Vladimir Sorokin as Neanderthal with notebook and wooden stick. The confrontation symbolizes the clash of different historical epochs. In more recent times Genia Chef has been interested in the idea of the "New Renaissance Man", the creator who forms a symbiosis of scientist and artist. Inspired by the research of the Russian academician Vladimir Skulachev on "Life without Aging", Genia Chef and Skulachev's son Maxim have developed the concept of an "Academy of Immortality".

Exhibitions (selection)

Book Illustrations

Bibliography

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. Cover photograph, Izvestija, no. 234, 1 September 1937.
  2. Who is Who in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
  3. Web site: The Body Implied: The Vanishing Figure in Soviet Art . 2024-03-28 . zimmerli.rutgers.edu . en.
  4. Web site: 2024-03-28 . en . The Body Implied: The Vanishing Figure in Soviet Art .
  5. Book: Lucie-Smith, Edward . Russian art in the new millennium . 2022 . Sergei Reviakin . 978-1-913491-72-7 . London . 1295103875.

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