Ivan Sotnikov Untitled (Circus in Red) 2014 Lithograph

Ivan Sotnikov (1961-2015) lived and worked in St Petersburg, where he studied art and photography at the Aleksandrov Professional Lycée, and later at the Orthodox Saint Tikhon Theological University, Moscow (2002–06). Over the years he worked with folkloric symbol systems, sound-extractions, music, cinema, publishing, and journalism. In 1996, he was ordained as a Russian Orthodox priest and from the late 1990s served in a parish in the village of Rogavka situated between Novgorod and St Petersburg. In 2015, The New Museum in St Petersburg held Ivan Sotnikov: Painting of the 20th-21st Century, the artist’s rst retrospective exhibition with over 100 works produced from the 1980s to the present decade, from public (the Russian Museum and Novy Museum) and private collections. HIs works are in the collections of The State Russian Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Centre Pompidou.