Vladimir Lisunov

Vladimir Lisunov's early childhood took place during the war years, and he and his mother and sister had to live through the Nazi Siege of Leningrad, and also through bombardment and air raids of the besieged city.

Some of Lisunov's paintings are full of mystical images and bring us in to other worlds, whereas others depict stories from the Bible or rural landscapes.

The idea of infinity saturates all of the master's works, showing the viewer themes of the travels of a certain force, which unites worlds and spaces, in which the most important things are mystical beings "astral bodies", entities which lived before.Not having his own studio and confined by his living conditions, Lisunov painted some of his pictures on a stairway landing, enduring hostile looks from passing neighbours.

In 1975, Lisunov planned to take part in an exhibition of avant-gardists in the "Nevsky Palace of Culture", but on the eve of the opening he was arrested by members of the KGB, and as a result he spent several days in a cell in the Bolshoy Dom on Liteyny Avenue.

But it was there, in the confines of the KGB, sitting in a cell, Vladimir Lisunov used a pencil to draw on paper a sketch which he later used when painting the picture 'The fugitive', which became a 'calling card' of his work.

The exception was only two or three small exhibits in private homes.In 1985, Vladimir Lisunov joined an independent creative association of Leningrad artists called "Ostrov" (English: "The Island").

Strikingly handsome, he felt linked by blood with the St Petersburg Silver Age, and always wore a full-length fox fur coat and a wide-brimmed romantic hat.

In his pictures Venuses swung on swings, strange philosophizing people wandered around fantastical and slummy cities, his winter scenes exuded longing for his native outskirts of the Leningrad region, in them thoughtful animals, wistful and cosy, and lost country folk came to the foreground.

A wave of mysterious killings of artists swept through St Petersburg at the time, as if the city was ridding itself of its already fading stage of turbulent underground , making the transition to a new life, to the gibbering, insipid 2000s.

Naturally handsome,[5] with a slim figure, he wore a floor-length overcoat and a scarlet scarf thrown carelessly around his neck.

The works of artist Vladimir Lisunov can be found in private collections in St Petersburg, Moscow, as well as in Estonia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Poland, US, Canada, Australia and Ireland.