B. 1937, Moscow, Russia
Sergei A. Volokhov is an established Russian artist, a member of artistic underground movement, which was
flourishing in Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s. The Russian art that was stagnating under the strict censorship
in the Stalin era and for the next 20 years suddenly exploded the Stalinist dogmas in the early 1970s. All official
exhibitions in Soviet Russia were subject to censorship.
Volokhov has taken part to nearly all unoffical exhibitions in Moscow with other artists (Oskar Rabin, Mikhail
Roginsky, Vladimir Titov, Anatoly Sverew, Vladimir Nemukhin, Nikolaï Vetchtomov, Ivan Tschuikov, Komar

and Melamid, Dmitri Plavinsky, Edouard Drobitskiy and many others). The first independent open-air exhi-
bition in Moscow was crushed by bulldozers (paintings and all) in the Autumn of 1974. It was followed by a

number of exhibitions at various flats or small venues, which were in turn closed by the authorities. It was a
real revival of Russian culture. It did not come easily but required a lot of personal courage and struggle from
its participants. The artists were regularly detained, arrested, some spent years in the camps. By late 1970s a
compromise between the artists and the authorities was established: the Moscow City Committee of Graphics at
Malaya Gruzinskaya street in Moscow became an umbrella union for unofficial artists with regular exhibitions
and moderate censorship. Only perestroika brought true independence but by that time many artists left Russia
for good.
Sergei A. Volokhov has lived in Brussels, Belgium from 1991.
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