About — Pavel Leonov

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Pavel Leonov (1920-2011) called himself “the designer” of the world. Persecuted by society and laughed at by his fellow villagers, Leonov was a holy fool. An innate sense of justice and an inquiring mind ensured him many years spent in and out of labor camps throughout the former Soviet Union, until his final release in 1955 after Stalin’s death.

Leonov structured a painting not as a single visual space, but as a hierarchy of horizontal and vertical segments associated with different spaces. These spaces are like windows, which Leonov called “television sets.” The narration occurs on several semantic planes, functioning on parallel levels and each carrying their own messages.

Leonov often depicted stories from his memories, but their implementation and his representation of historic and religious events were irrational and illogical. Leonov’s constructions of the world represent a personal language of symbols and signs, resembling the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics, which implies infinite the division and expansion of space, life, and experience. In his view, other realities exist in tandem with our own, and by projecting we can reach them. Using rough textiles and large sizes, his paintings resemble tapestries, in which the artist created powerful images of universal value.

Please click here to read a recent review of the exhibition Pavel Leonov: Through the Looking Glass at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (14 October 2020 - 7 February 2021.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Pavel Leonov: Through the Looking Glass, The Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2020
Raw Vision: 25 Years of Art Brut, Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, 2014
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, 2012
The Paintings of Pavel Leonov: From the Collection of Ksenia Bogemskaya, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 2011
The Work of Pavel Petrovich Leonov: From the Collection of Bohemian and Xenia Alexei Turchin, Rosa Azora Gallery, Moscow, 2010
Henry Boxer Gallery, London, 2007
Fairy Tale, Myth and Fantasy: Approaches to Spirituality in Art, Galerie St. Etienne, New York, NY, 2006-7
Russia's Holy Fool: The Outsider Art of Pavel Leonov, American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 2003
Russia's Self-Taught Artists: A New Perspective on the "Outsider," Galerie St. Etienne, New York, NY, 2003
Hammer Gallery, Amsterdam, 1999
Slovak National Gallery, Slovakia, 1997
Grand Prix Insita Laureat, International Festival of Native Art, 1997

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Boguemskaia-Turchin Collection
Croatian Museum of Naive Art, Zagreb, Croatia
De Stadshof Collection, Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent
Linacre College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Moscow Museum of Naive Art, Moscow
Museum Charlotte Zander, Bönnigheim Palace, Germany
Museum of Outsider Art, Moscow
Slovak National Gallery, Slovakia
Tsaritsyno Museum, Moscow
Vladimir-Suzdal Museum, Vladimir, Russia

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

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