Andrey Grositsky

Andrey Grositsky (1934 – 2017) was born in Moscow. In 1959 he graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Art n.a. V. I Surikov. From 1962 to 1994 he taught at the Extramural People’s University of the Arts (ZNUI) with M. Roginsky, B. Turetsky, I. Chuikov. In 1968 he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, but continued his extremely individual search in painting and soon began to take part in apartment exhibitions of unofficial art. In 1975 his works were shown at one of the first exhibitions of “forbidden” art in the “House of Culture” pavilion at VDNH, and the year after that Grositsky participated in the “experimental” exhibition in the hall of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists (MOSH), along with P. Belenok, A. Slepyshev, O. Tselkov, M. Roginsky and others. In the era of Perestroika Russian museums began buying Grositsky’s works. In the latter period he began to exhibit regularly. Today the artist’s works are in the collections of many major museums (including the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Zimmerli Museum, the USA), as well as in the largest private collections and foundations in Russia and abroad. In 2007 Andrey Grositsky had a solo exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, and in 2015 – a retrospective in the Museum of Moscow. The artist died in Moscow in the autumn of 2017.