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Ex-Libris for Liudmyla Iniushyna

Alexander Aksinin

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-4086
Author: Alexander Aksinin
Name: Ex-Libris for Liudmyla Iniushyna
Date of creation: 1974
Technique: etching
Material: imprint on paper
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 10.4 x 10

Additionally

Type: printmaking
Provenance: Courtesy of V. Onusaitis, 1987

Information about author

Author: Alexander Aksinin
Artist's lifetime: 1949–1985
Country: the Ukrainian SSR, now Ukraine
Biography: Alexander Aksinin was a graphic artist and one of the brightest representatives of Lviv nonconformist culture. He was born on October 2, 1949, in Lviv, in the family of a military cartographer and railroad official of the Lviv railway. Between 1963 and 1966, he received his art education at the evening art school in Lviv. Between 1967 and 1972, the artist continued his studies at the Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Polygraphic Institute, where he specialised in Graphic Art. After graduation, Aksinin served in the Soviet Army, where he participated in designing the exposition of the Military History Museum. Between 1974 and 1977, he worked as an art designer in an industrial design office. In 1977, he left the official service and began to work exclusively as a freelance artist. The apartment of Aksinin and his wife, the writer and artist Engelina (Gelya) Buriakovska (1944–1982), became one of the Lviv centres of informal art; the first home exhibitions were held here. Alexander and Gelya were well acquainted with the representatives of the cultural underground of Moscow and Leningrad, particularly with Dmytro Prihov, Viktor Kryvulin, Illia Kabakov, and others. They also had friendly relations with Baltic artists, such as Tõnis Vint, with whom Alexander developed a close rapport and Polish ones. Since 1974, Aksinin participated in group exhibitions; in 1979, his first personal exhibition was organised in Tallinn with the assistance of the artist Tõnis Vint. In the early 1980s, the poet Viktor Kryvulin helped to arrange several of Aksinin's "kvartirnik" exhibitions in Leningrad and Moscow.
On May 3, 1985, on his way back from Tallinn, Alexander Aksinin died in a plane crash over Zolochiv near Lviv. During his lifetime, the artist created 343 etchings, about 200 sheets of uniquely drawn graphics (drawings in watercolour, Indian ink, and gouache, including prints), as well as five paintings. 27 volumes of the artist's diaries for the period from 1965 to 1985 contain more than 200 sketches and a large number of drawings-ideas; they are partially publicly available on the artist's website. In 2015, Alexander Aksinin's etching series "Boskhiana" was included in the permanent exposition of the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. The works are stored in the Lviv National Art Gallery, the Estonian Art Museum, and the National Art Museum of Ukraine. In 1981, Alexander Aksinin wrote his laconic autobiography for an article by Viktor Kryvulin, in which he consciously contrasted his inner world with external events, combining the facts of his biography with his own artistic and metaphysical experience: "In 1949, a seemingly russian man was born in the seemingly European city of Lviv. Orthodox Christian. In 1972 – received a diploma from the Polygraphic Institute in the field of Graphic Art. In 1977 – the first revelation with a concomitant sense of time. In 1981 – the second revelation with a concomitant sense of eternity. In 1979 – the first solo exhibition in Tallinn. In 1981 – the second one in Poland. That is all."

Object description

Alexander Aksinin's creative world is characterised by a condensed intellectual atmosphere full of "codes of aesthetic information". Numerous ex-libris by Aksinin, even in appearance, have little in common with the traditional canons of book signs; in essence, these are miniature "philosophical essays" embodied in complex systems of visual, literary, and verbal texts.
This is Alexander Aksinin's early work, which was created before his unique creative style was formed. The etching is made with humour and banter over a friend.
The angel is imprisoned in a cage! This is how the author graphically expressed his friend's suffering: after graduating from an art institution, the artist was sent to work as a fashion designer at a knitwear factory.
A bird cage hangs on the needle. In some places, it is wrapped in cobwebs between the bars (hinting at a knitted jersey). Inside the cage, the author schematically depicts a bent female figure wearing a long cloak, felt boots, angel wings behind her back, round glasses on the same round face, and curls on her head. Tiny faces with wings fly around the cage, hinting at those not "stuck" inside. Several grains of bird food are scattered on the cage's cobwebbed floor. Some of them fеll down without being eaten.
A snake-like thread is threaded through the needle's eye. The initials "LN" (Liudmyla Nikolaievna) appear on the left, between the twists and turns. The inscription "EXLIBRIS / INIUSHYNA" is at the top, above the horizontal of the needle. To the right of the inscription is a continuation of the thread, with grains for birds in its bend. At the bottom, under the cage's floor, one can notice a circle with the artist's initial "a" inside a triangle.

Lіudmуla Iniushyna (b. 1948), a fashion designer. She graduated from the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. Between 1972 and 2011, the artist worked at the "Kyіanka" knitting factory in Kyiv.

Inscriptions

At the bottom right under the imprint, there is an author's inscription "Aksinin, 74"

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Ex-Libris for Liudmyla Iniushyna

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