Oil on Canvas (framed)
Dated 1983
35″ x 27″
Alexander Kalugin participated in the daring 1974 “nonconformist” art show in Moscow’s Izmailovsky Park. He was arrested after the art show and later released when he signed a letter agreeing to never create abstract art. Kalugin was never interested in abstract art but, as a form of rebellion, he started to dabble in it.
Kalugin continues to paint. He splits his time between his Moscow apartment, where he has lived in since I met him 1983, and a cottage in the forest where there is no wifi and only a sporadic phone connection. His wife, Tamara, told me that they enjoy the quiet and being in nature. His work is in museums and private collections all over the world. The largest collection of his early works are here in the United States, at the Grinnell College Museum of Art in Iowa, and the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey.
I believe that the painting represents the Pskov Krom, a citadel whose fortress and Holy Trinity Cathedral date from medieval times. It is very close to Estonia.