Vladimir Yankilevsky

b. 1938 — d. 2018

Vladimir Yankilevsky was a Russian artist known mostly for his participation in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement of the 1960s through the 1980s. Perhaps his most famous works are his triptychs, works that are difficult to classify, occupying a unique middle ground between painting, and sculpture, similar in some ways to Rauschenberg's combines. On the most basic level, these works use disorienting, often nightmarish imagery to paint a picture of restrictive mental states associated with daily life in the Soviet Union, and with the human condition in general. He is also known for having participated in the Manezh Art Exhibit of 1962, during which Nikita Khrushchev famously chastised the Nonconformist Art Movement as degenerate. Yankilevsky last lived in Paris, France with his wife Rimma.