Biography
From the 1950s through the 1980s, Vassiliev worked with friend and collaborator Erik Bulatov as a children's book illustrator. They developed a unique style of illustration that combined realist painting with graphic elements, such as text. This "official" source of income provided the means and materials for Vassiliev to take part in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement, also known as "unofficial" or "dissident" art. Along with friends, Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov and Victor Pivovarov, Vassiliev belonged to a large group of Soviet artists that took advantage of the Nikita Khrushchev "thaw" in official policy that opened up the Soviet Union to Western culture in the years following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953.
Read more about this topic: Oleg Vassiliev (painter)
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