artist michael kogan

Michael Kogan was born in 1955 in Leningrad (now - St Petersburg).
He was taught his first drawing lessons by his father.
From 1976 to 1978 he studied at the studio of the artist Y.I. Skorikov and attended evening drawing classes at the Academy of Arts.
In 1978-1983 Michael studied at the Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design in Leningrad (now – Stieglitz Art and Industry Academy).

The artist was highly influenced by the aura of the house he grew up in - the house of the merchant Dernov on the corner of Tverskaya and Tavricheskaya streets in St. Petersburg, the so-called "tower-house". This house was one of the centers of cultural, intellectual and artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The history of the house is connected with the names of Vyacheslav Ivanov, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Nikolay Gumilyov, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Benois, Leon Bakst, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Ivan Bilibin, Mark Chagall - representatives of the "Silver Age" of Russian literature and arts.

While experimenting as a student, Michael created his own original technique, language and symbolism, his own code.

In 1990 Michael immigrated to Israel, where to this day he continues to develop his style. He is one of the founders of the Israeli art group "Tramway". The very first exhibition in Israel showed one of the main features of the artist, his ambition to perfection. Every point on his painting or graphic sheet is a main one. Gradually Kogan departs from group exhibitions that do not allow him to expose himself fully. Exploring pictorial textures, he finds some very interesting effects of deep and multilayered visual penetration into a painting or a graphic sheet. The viewer is seemingly pulled inside, discovering at the same time his own world. Kogan's paintings are associative and sensual.
 

The Art of Michael Kogan is nostalgic ...
… 1915. The "Tramway B " exhibition... Artists of the first Russian avant-garde: Malevich, Filonov, Altman, Rodchenko, Kandinsky, Puni, Tatlin...

The challenge of the epoch demanded from the artist an adequate response, new and traditional at the same time. And he unconsciously turned to what has already been imprinted in capital letters into world art history text and became undisputed and recognized worldwide cultural phenomenon, to the first Russian avant-garde. From the "collective subconscious" of civilization he has picked up its traditions (no wonder critics find an unconscious dialogue with Filonov in Kogan's works) and refashioned it according to what he saw at the turn of the centuries and millennia.

    
Michael Kogan participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe, Israel, Russia and United States. His artworks have been acquired by the Israeli banks and private collections in America, Israel, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Czech Republic.

 

Elena Sigal
(This articl used excerpts from the article A Kireeva "Cartel")