Boris Sveshnikov

Boris Sveshnikov (1927–1998) is a Russian, Soviet non-conformist painter. At the age of 19 in the year 1946, he was studying at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. However, he was falsely accused of engaging in terrorist activity and was interned in a Gulag labor camp by the Soviet government. He spent eight years imprisoned, first at a camp called Vetlosian where he felled trees and dug trenches with other laborers. Later a friend of his got him a safer and less strenuous position as a night watchman in a carpentry workshop, and he produced a number of drawings on pen and paper at this time. In 1954 he was released and continued to work in his style of fantastic realism that he developed in the Siberian labor camp. Despite the injustices done to him by the government, his work is apolitical. Sveshnikov once said “what I painted at home I did for myself… All of my works are dedicated to the grave.”