"Authorized for Export from the USSR..."

Moscow nonconformist art from the collections of Ekaterina and Vladimir Semenikhin and private owners

"Authorized for Export from the USSR..." exhibition catalogue (the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, June 21 - October 2, 2011) is dedicated to significant stage in the history of Russian art. The political changes of the mid-1950s and so-called Khruches' Thaw gave rise to the unusual flourishing of the art, which contradicted not only to all official directions and dogmas of social realism, but also to classics. The "Other art" characterized by a diversity of styles, techniques and trends and greatly influenced the further development of Russian culture.

The "Other art" or the "Second Avant-Garde" was not accepted by the authorities, it was supposed to fall into oblivion, but continued to exist and develop in the status of an unofficial, unauthorized art. The Era of nonconformist art lasted until the beginning of perestroika and the fall of the "Iron Curtain".

The Soviet authorities did not prevent the export of nonconformist's artworks abroad. Many of the nonconformist's works are marked by the stamp of the Ministry of culture "Authorized for the export from the USSR ...", which in former times can be considered as a stigma denoting that the picture does not have artistic value. As a result many nonconformists' artworks were exported abroad and only in recent years, were returned to Russia through the efforts of the private collectors.The nonconformist art is a rich and complex material for reflection and interpretations at once. The catalogue can be considered not only as an attempt to outline the history of unofficial art, but also as a publication that contains a unique compilation of nonconformist's works.

The catalogue includes the articles by Alla Rosenfeld and Evgeny Barabanov art critics, who carried out an in-depth analysis of the nonconformism phenomenon and the creative work of individual artists. The catalogue contains as well a unique Chronicle of the Moscow artistic life in 1956-th to 1988-th compiled by Alexandra Obuhova.

Catalogue includes the artworks by such famous artists as Erik Bulatov, Anatoly Zverev, Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Valentina Kropivnitskaya and Lev Kropivnitsky, Vladimir Nemukhin, Oscar Rabin, Ulo Sooster, Oleg Tselkov, Eduard Steinberg, Vladimir Yankilevsky, and many others. The catalogue was published both in Russian and in English.