Mikhail Shemyakin biography

Mikhail Shemyakin paintings Russian sculptor
Mikhail Mikhaylovich Shemyakin was born 4 May 1943 in Moscow, age 65 now. He is a Russian , ethnic Kabardian. He is a painter, stage designer, sculptor and publisher, and a controversial representative of the nonconformist art tradition of St. Petersburg.
Shemyakin was born to a military family and spent his early years in the East Germany. His family returned to the Soviet Union in 1957 and he studied at the secondary school of art affiliated with the Il’ya Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
Mikhail Shemyakin Peter the Great sculptor
Photo (c) by Author Sergey Galchenkov from wiki, this file is licensed under the Creative Commons.
Later he got a job at the Hermitage Museum. With his colleagues from the museum he organized an exhibition in 1964. He called its contents "metaphysical syntenism". With this group of artists he walked into an office of a highly ranked bureaucrat of the Communist Party and audaciously presented his manifest. In consequence he and the head of the museum lost their jobs. Shemyakin was sent to mental hospital on several occasions. At those times this was an usual way of "treating" the ones who disagreed with the Communist Party. Between the periods that he spent in the mental institute, he worked at different jobs, as a postman for example, and presented his artworks in a variety of places - wherever he could. This is how he lived until he was expelled for failing to conform to the Socialist Realism norms in 1971.
After leaving the Soviet Union, he settled in France until he moved to New York City in 1981. While in Paris, France, he published Apollon-77, which was an almanac of post-Stalinist art, poetry and photography.
His work often exhibits the surreal grotesque, portraying the world as a colourful carnival, intimidating the viewer in its terrifying metamorphoses.
Shemyakin is said to have led an anarchic, bohemian life, and the poet Andrey Voznesensky described him as the "black prince of the Russian underworld".
The children victims of adult vices, indifference.Picture (c) by Author Lvova from wiki
Children are victims of vices of adults " by Mihail Shemyakin, Moscow,Russia

Interestingly, Shemyakin, though Russian born, signs all his works in his French name, “M. Chemiakine”, though when titled, his artwork is always in Russian. Also, the place of his signature varies from canvas to canvas either in the lower right or lower left corners, though it is always on the bottom of the canvas.
Mikhail Shemjakin Gofmaniada
genius animation

Currently, Shemyakin is in Russia, working with director Stanislav Sokolov and the studio Soyuzmultfilm to create a stop motion-animated feature film based on the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, called Gofmaniada. The earliest that the film is expected to be released is in 2008.
bio info (c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Shemyakin