THE TSUKANOV ART COLLECTION

 

Lamm Leonid

 
“I believe that the World, in the larger sense of the word, can not be seen by a person in its entirety. So it can not be described entirely and definitively by anyone.
In the radius of the space surrounding us we strive in our own consciousness to order (at least for ourselves) the shapes we see and the feelings that we experience. The problem, however, is that this circle’s radius does not have constant parameters, just as this space does not have fixed components. The artist – and I’m sure of this – can not avoid feeling this. Step by step (in each work he produces), the artist outfits the artistic space according to his own consciousness, nonetheless aware, that his motivations can not claim to be entirely exhausted. In other words – the End without the Beginning that follows."

Born in 1928

Leonid Lamm is a famous artist born in Moscow, who has lived in the America since 1982. During his creative journey, Lamm proposed a number of ideas, which later found their development and completed form in the work of other masters, including abstraction and the assembly of ready-made components, the use of words as images, and the use of ideological symbols as a visual form. The artist’s interest was captured by models of various kinds of “collective action,” which in one way or another limit the freedom of the individual, making the person a part of the crowd, rank or system among a number of similar elements. Lamm is one of the only artist’s of the older generation to use computer technology and video, giving “new life” to the work he created in the 50s and 60s.


"Having absorbed the innovative ideas of the early 20th century Lamm developed the laconicism and constructivism of the expressive language discovered by the artists of Russian avant-garde. Possessing the world outlook of his own, it was Lamm who, earlier than sots art painters, introduced into the mid-20th century art the verbal metaphors reflecting his ironic attitude to social stereotypes. Transformed by the artist, the words from the slogans and songs acquired another, quite often, opposite meaning, for instance, Pobeda (Victory) and Po-beda (Po-Disaster). Thus, making use of the slogans which had got into mass consciousness the artist reinterprets them imparting new figurativeness to the words. Having left for the United States in the early 1980s Lamm has remained true to himself. Keeping intact the integrity of metaphoric thinking the artist continues to incarnate his understanding of the universe in the laconic painterly forms", Doctor Yevgenia Petrova, Director for academic research, the Russian Museum.
 
The artist's work can be found in the following museums and collections:
Gollar
National Centre for Contemporary Arts