Yuri Kuper
(1940-)
Yuri Kuper is a Russian artist fascinated by the marks that time leaves on things. He studied at the Moscow Academy of Art. In the late 1960s, he became a member of the USSR Union of Painters and exhibited regularly. He is renowned for his book illustrations and set design skills. In 1970, he designed the sets for Leonid Zorin's play The Copper Grandmother (dedicated to an episode in Alexander Pushkin's life) for the Art Theater (MKHAT). The creation was not completed due to opposition from the public authorities of the time. This had a profound effect on him.
Kuper left Russia for Israel in the early 1970s. He then moved to London and Paris. He also spent time in the United States. He was greatly impressed by the freedom, lack of censorship and difference in values of the Western world compared to what he had experienced in Russia. In Paris, in the early 1980s, he managed to establish collaborations with major galleries such as Galerie Claude Bernard, Galerie Jan Krugier- Ditesheim & Cie, Galerie Vallois and Bouquinerie de l'Institut (now Galerie de l'Institut). At the time, his painting was in a dreamlike, poetic vein, in the continuity of surrealism. His meeting with the American photographer John Stuart was a major turning point in the orientation of his artistic approach. Stuart encouraged him to paint the objects in his environment. This Kuper did through the prism of the passage of time. Time shapes the life of objects, giving them depth and thickness. His highly personal and immediately identifiable aesthetic is based on the aged, eroded and worn materials of everyday objects, in settings that evoke feelings of melancholy and solitude.
His painting practice goes beyond the canvas. He created works in volume, using objects as painterly supports: spoons, knives, brushes, shovels, boxes. Like most artists of his time, Kuper practiced his art in many fields other than the traditional Beaux-Arts. He created ceramics and jewelry, the latter appearing to emerge from his canvases. Some of his ceramics, like his cups, resemble archaeological remains. He composes theater and opera sets, including Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov in 2007, Georges Bizet's Carmen in 2008, Gioachino Rossini's Othello in 2008-2010, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker in 2013. Kuper has also created a tapestry and lithographic book illustrations, including Alexander Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri (1830), (Paris, Edition Philippe Moreno, 2010), as well as The Book of Job, Saint Petersburg, Rare Books, 2010; and Swan Lake, published by the same company in 2014.
Yuri Kuper has an extensive lithography practice, in particular with Atelier Bordas, the famous print shop created by Frank Bordas in 1978.
