Kuper, Yuri

Biography of Yuri Kuper

Born in Moscow in 1940, Yuri Kuper studied art at the Moscow Academy of Art before becoming a member of the Union of Artists in the USSR in 1967. He began exhibiting at the Moscow Salon Graphique in 1970.

He emigrated to Israel in 1972, published a novel entitled "Fous sacrés à Moscou" in 1973, moved to Paris in 1975 and finally became a British citizen in 1983. His work has been exhibited all over the world (Paris, Berlin, New York, Tokyo...), and several major museums have devoted solo exhibitions to him, including MoMA and the Pushkin Museum in 1990. His work is diversified: equally interested in writing, painting and engraving, he also creates costumes and sets for opera, notably those for Boris Godunov in 2007, which marked the reopening of the Bolshoi Opera House.

A member of the Mémoires group, a group of artists formed in the late 90s, his work focuses on everyday objects, which he depicts in a cold manner, giving a strange distance to these nonetheless banal objects.

In 2010, he produced a series of shovels on which he paints everyday artifacts, such as salt or matchboxes. In 2013, he produced a series of mugs that he subjected to multiple firings and alterations (modeling, sanding and scraping) to give them a weathered appearance, like the remains of an ancient civilization; he calls this series "Pompeii". Today, Yuri Kuper continues his artistic explorations and regularly exhibits in various galleries.