Purygin Leonid

Leonid Anatolyevich Purygin (1951-1995) was born in a military town near Naro-Fominsk (Moscow Region) in the family of a career officer who, having retired, created doll models for a toy factory. In 1965, L. Purygin left school and lived in odd jobs. Since 1969, the artist visited the studio at the Narofominsk House of Culture. Several times unsuccessfully tried to enter the Moscow Art College. 1905 Speaking as a painter, from the beginning of the 1970s L. Purygin gained fame in the narrow environment of the “apartment underground”. In the 1980s, the artist had a workshop in Furmanny Lane (which gave the name to the whole direction of the Russian “unofficial” art), but practically did not adjoin any groups, going his own way. This path has become a step-by-step expression of the characteristic features of “art brut” as a special kind of “naive art”, replacing its traditionally idyllic moods with schizoanalytic “personal mythologies”. Always at the center of these mythologies is Lenya Purygin himself. An artist from Nara Genius, which is how the artist signed on his business cards. He is surrounded by personal phantoms, among which the image of the “Blue Woman” dominates – an angel regularly rescuing the author from hell; its opposite is Pipa Puryginskaya, a fantastic female beast. The artist’s compositions are always psychedelic bright, shining against the background of cosmic darkness. They enlarged over time, turning into numerous “altar relics”. These are such “psychedelic altars” as “Pipa” (“Vision on Lake Coverage”) 1985, “Moloch” (“Death of the Blue Butterfly”), 1988 – these are works marked the triumphal entry of L. Purygin into the international art market.

In 1989, the artist emigrated to the United States, settling in New York, where he secured his success with the support of the Eduard Nakhamkin Gallery. In 1992, L. Purygin organized an exhibition of contemporary Russian “naive art” and a special gallery with which he sought to support young artists stylistically close to him.In addition, the artist published three books of prose, written in the manner of “stream of consciousness”, set forth in the likeness of a “white verse” (“Crap. Miniromania”, 1990; “Space Fool”, 1993; Publiya, 1993).

L. A. Purygin died in Moscow from a heart attack during his next visit to his homeland. The artist’s works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art ART4.RU, the P. Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Henry Nunnen Museum in Germany, the Eduard Nakhamkin Fine Arts Gallery in the USA, as well as in many private collections around the world.

A magical toy object, a paradoxical object on the verge of a magical dream and immediate reality turned L. Purygin into an artist. The world of an object that lives in the mystical layers of reality, with which a person enters the game and with whom he communicates as a virtual object, naturally moved in the work of L. Purygin into the layers of his painting, folding objects and sculptures.

The painting “Green Man” depicts one of the metaphysical objects, a mystical spirit, in the image similar to Saw. Each part of the master’s composition is perceived as a living part of the universe, containing all its properties and qualities. The artist said so about his fabulously mystical painting: “I love most when my art is defined as“ mystical realism. ”For me, this is the reality in which I live … I have thousands of pictures merged into a single one. When I start writing , I get inside the picture … I exist there … I feel everything from within “from the other side”, then I come back. This is the mysticism. “