Genia boss

Genia boss

Genia Chef (born January 28, 1954 in Aktjubinsk / USSR as Jewgenij Scheffer) is a German-Russian artist (painting, graphic. Installations) who lives 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.

Career

Genia Chef was born in 1954 in Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan as Jewgenij Scheffer. His father, Vladimir Scheffer, a Moscow photojournalist, was exiled to the Gulag in Kazakhstan as a victim of the Stalinist purges for political reasons . As a result of his rehabilitation in 1961, the family was allowed to return to Moscow. Genia Chef grew up there and studied from 1972 to 1977 at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute with Andrei Dmitrijewitsch Gontscharow (graphics) and Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Schilinsky (painting). He graduated with first prize for the diploma (illustrations for EAPoe). After moving to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1985, he studied at the invitation of Rudolf Hausner from 1988 to 1993 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna . He was a master student of Arik Brauer , completed his studies in 1993 with a Magister Artium and was awarded the Golden Fueger Prize of the Vienna Art Academy. In 2017, Genia Chef was accepted as an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

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While still a student, Genia Chef began working as an illustrator for the avant-garde magazine "Znanie -Sila", which provided a platform for non-conformist artists such as Yulo Sooster, who is considered a forerunner of Moscow conceptualism . The editor-in-chief of the experimental magazine was Yuri Sobolev, a figure of the Moscow underground art scene and author of the cartoons "Once Upon a Time", "Butterfly" and "The Glass Harmonica". Yevgeny Scheffer took on the stage name Genia Chef when he began to take part in exhibitions by Moscow Nonconformists on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street in the 1970s-80s. Here he exhibited with artists such as Viktor Pivovarov , Francisco Infante , Anatoli Swerew , Andrei Roiter, Semyon Faibisovich and Konstantin Khudiakov. After studying at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, Genia Chef lived primarily from book illustrations, like other non-conformist artists in the USSR of that time (e.g. Ilya Kabakov , Oleg Vasiliev or Erik Bulatow ). He illustrated a. a. EAPoe or American Romantic Tales. His non-conformist painting was influenced by modern western art movements during this period. After moving to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1985, the artist devoted himself entirely to painting. He spent a lot of time in the Spanish artist town of Cadaques , where he developed his posthistorical style (Manifest des Posthistorismus, 1986). At that time he created works in which the artist staged familiar figures from Russian history such as Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky or WILenin in landscapes of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Often historical persons like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini are depoliticized and depicted as extras in world history. On the occasion of an exhibition in Antonio Canova's former studio in Rome, Genia Chef wrote his manifesto of neo-mythology with the title “Viva Canova!” (1995). The mixing of post-historical and neo-mythological concepts characterizes his work from this period (see “The Birth of Myths”, 1993, diploma thesis at the Vienna Art Academy). A comprehensive solo exhibition in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg entitled “Gloria Novi Saeculi” (“Glory of a New Century”) in 2011 presents numerous key works from both creative periods.

In 2013, Genia Chef is represented in the official accompanying program of the 55th Venice Biennale with the multimedia installation “Dead House” (Palazzo Bembo, Collateral Events). Here the artist addresses the murder of the Russian tsarist family, and this remains an important aspect in his work (several museum exhibitions in Russia, 2017–2019).

In 2015, Genia Chef and his friend, the writer Wladimir Sorokin , presented the project “Pavillon Telluria” in the Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfù during the 56th Venice Biennale. Genia Chef's “Archive of Limit States” consists of more than 200 small-format works that form a kind of visual diary. In their performance on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, both artists fight against each other: Genia Chef as a knight with a lance and shield, Wladimir Sorokin as a Neanderthal with a notebook and a wooden stick. The dispute symbolizes the clash of different historical epochs.

More recently, 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 Russian academician Vladimir Skulachev on “Life without Aging”, Genia Chef and his son Maxim Skulachev developed the concept of an “Academy of Immortality”.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1976: First exhibition of the avant-garde. Gorkom of Graphic Artists, Malaya Gruzinskaya, Moscow
• 1976–85: Exhibitions of the Nonconformists, Moscow
• 1987: Don Quixote. Olot City Museum, Spain
• 1988: Triennial. Stadtmuseum Ulm, Germany
• 1989: Galeria Maria Salvat, Barcelona, ​​Spain (solo exhibition)
• 1991: House of Latin America, Monte Carlo, Monaco Solo exhibition (patronage of Prince Louis de Polignac)
• 1993: Monumental Propaganda. (Curators Komar and Melamid), World Financial Center, New York
• 1994: Old Symbols, New Icons in Russian Contemporary Art. Stuart Levy Fine Art, New York, USA Ideal Landscapes: Artists from the Former Soviet Union. de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara / California, USA
• 1994–95 : Neo-Mythology and Regressive Projects. Stuart Levy Fine Art, New York (solo exhibition)
• 1997: Promenades in Arcadia. Italian Cultural Institute Berlin (solo exhibition)
• 1998: Neo-Academism and Electronic Art. New Academy, St. Petersburg
• 1998–99: It's the Real Thing: Soviet and Post-Soviet Sots Art and American Pop Art. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, USA
• 1999: Play and Passion. [1] State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg A 25 Year Retrospective on Non-Conformist Russian Art. Kolodzei Art Foundation, Kennan Institute, Washington, DC, USA
• 2000: The Hurricane of Time: Art of the 1960s through 2000. Kolodzei Art Foundation, Villa Ormond, San Remo, Italy L'Age d'Or. Museum Center Luis Bunuel, Calanda, Spain
• 2000–2001: Jesus Christ in Christian Art and Culture 14th to 20th Centuries. [2] State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg a. Monasterio di Santa Chiara, San Marino
• 2001: Between Earth and Heaven. [3] PMMK Museum of Modern Art, Ostend, Belgium The Sum is Greater Than the Parts: Collage & Assemblage in the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. [4] Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA
• 2002: Shock and Show. Festival of International Contemporary Art, Trieste, Italy Artists of the Ideal. Palazzo Forti, Verona, Italy
• 2003: Remembrance: Russian Post-Modern Nostalgia. Yeshiva University Museum, New York Foreign Visions. Strong Foundation, Berlin a. Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, North Macedonia (solo exhibition) M ° A ° I ° S V. Paradies , bunker under Alexanderplatz, Berlin
• 2004: HA KYPOPT! Russian Art Today! Kunsthalle Baden-Baden , Germany a. Novy Manezh, Moscow Gods Becoming Men. Frissiras Museum, Athens, Greece Danses de la Mort. White Space Gallery, London (solo exhibition)
• 2005: Glory of a New Century. Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia (solo exhibition) Western Biennale. John Natsoulas Art Center, Davis / California, USA Finding Freedom: 40 Years of Soviet and Russian Art. Kolodzei Art Foundation, Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Tarpon Springs, USA
• 2006: Times of Change. The Art of 1960-85 in the Soviet Union. [5] State Russian Museum, St Petersburg Meditazione sulla Realta. Palazzo della Ragione, Mantua, Italy
• 2007: I Believe. II Moscow Biennale, installation “My Personal Temple”. Vinsavod, Moscow
• 2008: Power of Water. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg
• 2009: Born in the USSR - Russian Art from Germany . Foreign Office, Berlin

• 2010: Shattered Utopia. Russian Art of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods from the Wayne F. Yakes, MDCollection. [6] Fort Collins Museum of Art, USA The Sky in Art. [7] State. Russian Museum, St Petersburg

• 2011: Glory of a New Century. [8] State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (solo exhibition) Points of View. [9] Art Museum, Boulder, USA

• 2013: Installation Dead House, as part of Personal Structures. [10] Palazzo Bembo, Collateral Events, 55th Venice Biennale Russian Berlin , as part of the White Nights Festival, Central Exhibition Hall, Perm, Russia

• 2014: Genia Chef, Ilya Kabakov, Oleg Vassiliev. The Blinding Light of History. University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, USA

• 2015: Pavilion Telluria ( in cooperation with Wladimir Sorokin), Palazzo Rocca Contarini Corfu, during the 56th Venice Biennale

• 2017: Installation "Disintegration of the Black Square". APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale , [11] Malta.
• 2018–2019: Family Album , Museum of Fine Arts Kaluga, Russia and later touring exhibition by museums of the Moscow region (solo exhibition)
• 2019: Masters of Russian Realism: Oleg Vassiliev - Genia Chef - Komar and Melamid. Columbus State University, Georgia, USA
• 2019/2020: On the Edge of the World. [12] State Art Museum Novosibirsk, Russia (solo exhibition)
• 2020: Academy of Immortality, [13] as part of the traveling exhibition ART-PROJECT 2020-2070 , Architecture Museum , Moscow

Book illustrations (selection)

• Illustrations in the monthly. Avant-garde magazine "Znanie-sila", Moscow, 1976–1981
• Mihail Eminescu, Luceafarul, Detskaya Literatura Publishing House, Moscow, 1979
• KKSluchevsky, Poetry, Detskaya Literatura Publishing House, Moscow, 1983
• Vil Lipatov, The Stoletov Dossier, Raduga Publishing House, Moscow, 1983
• EAPoe, Prose and Poetry, Raduga Publishing House, Moscow, 1983
• Vsevolod Garshin, Amapola Roja, Raduga Publishing House, Moscow, 1984
• American Romantic Tales, Raduga Publishing House, Moscow, 1984
• Erich Kästner, Selected Prose a. Poems, Raduga Verlag, Moscow, 1985 (book cover)
• Alexander Genis, USA From A to Z, Uralskij Universitet Publ., Ekaterinburg, 1997
• Mikhail Epstein, Aleksandr Genis, Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture, Berghahn Books, 1999
• Michael Lederer , Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore, Parsifal Ediciones, Barcelona 1999 (book cover and illustrations), ISBN 978-84-87265-99-0
• Wiktor Pelewin , Buddha's Little Finger, Penguin, NY, 2000 a. Mondadori, Milano (book cover)
• Richard Faber, The Eternal Rome or: the city and the globe. On the archeology of “occidental” globalization, Verlag Koenigshausen Neumann, 2001 (book cover), ISBN 978-3-8260-2034-6 .
• Michael Lederer, The Great Game, PalmArt Press, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-941524-12-5 (book cover).
• Michael Lederer, Cadaqués, Parsifal Ediciones, Barcelona 2014 (book cover)

credentials

• R Santos Torroella, Genia Chef y la perestroika, ABC, Madrid, 6/1989
• F. Miralles, Genia Chef, voluntad moralizante y estetica, La Vanguardia, Barcelona, ​​6/1989
• L. Prudovsky, Genia Chef - Mannerist i Kosmopolit, Ogonyok, 13/1992
• Constantin Boym, Regressive Design, Metropolis, NY, 5/1993
• В.Завалишин, Сумерки лжепророка, Русская Жизнь, Сан Франсиско, 5/1994
• Н.Козлова, От революции к эротике, Новое Русское Слово, Нью-Йорк, 7/1994
• А.Генис, Третий Рим Жени Шефа, Панорама, Нью-Йорк, 1/1995
• J.Croghan, Realistic Painting in An Imaginery Landscape, American Artist, 12/1995
• В.Моев, Упразднитель времени. Женя Шеф о себе, о кризисе авангардизма и о новом Ренессансе, Литературная Газета, Москва, 11/1998
• JMCadena, Las revoluciones olvidadas de Genia Chef, El Periodico, Barcelona, ​​6/1999
• F.Miralles, Imaginativo Genia Chef - las dictaturas, la historiay el ordenador, La Vanguardia, Barcelona, ​​7/1999
• The International Who's Who 2000, Europa Publ., London ISBN 1 85743 050 6 , Library of Congess Catalog Card number 35-10257
• Edward Lucie-Smith: The Glory of Angels . Harper Design Pub., London 2000, ISBN 0-06-178777-9 (English).
• Edward Lucie-Smith, Art Tomorrow, Terrail ed., Paris, 2002 EAN 9782879392493
• Edward Lucie-Smith, Visions of Hellfire, Critic's Diary, London, ArtReview, September 2002
• Flowers from No Man's Land , ed. by President of the Berlin House of Representatives, Berlin 2003
• M ° A ° I ° S 5 - Paradies (exhibition catalog), ed. by Torsten and Nina Römer, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-00-013874-9 .
• HA KYPOPT! Russian Art Today , ed. by Mathias Winzen and Georgy Nikitsch, Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-87909-835-2
• Lexicon of Fantastic Artists. Edited by Gerhard Habarta, Vienna, 2010 ISBN 978-3848263073
• Genia Chef, Glory of a New Century, Palace Ed., St.Petersburg, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86384-054-9 (catalog for the exhibition in the Russian Museum St. Petersburg)
• Genia Chef, On the Edge of the World, Novosibirsk, 2019, ISBN 978-3-6042635-8-7
• Стародубцева З.Б. Русские художники за рубежом. 1970-2010-е годы, изд. БуксМАрт, Москва 2020, ISBN 978-5-907043-69-5 .

Web links

• www.geniachef.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://en.rusmuseum.ru/marble-palace/exhibitions/genia-chef-glory-of-a-new-century/