A solo exhibition of Viktor Nikolaev (1943-2017), curated by Daria Lomova and drawn from a private collection. It was the first presentation of Nikolaev's work in Moscow since his death.

Nikolaev was a Russian-German abstract painter and calligrapher and one of the leading figures of abstract painting in unofficial Soviet art. His path began in 1968. In 1976-77 he organised apartment exhibitions with Dmitri Prigov, Boris Orlov, Igor Shelkovsky and other nonconformist artists, and in the 1970s he met Francisco Infante, a meeting that shaped his individual style. He looked to Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh and Joan Miro, as well as to Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.

Zen Buddhism and the spontaneous painting of Jackson Pollock both informed his search for a non-objective language. In the late 1980s he turned to tachisme and a meditative technique of gouache on paper; later, calligraphic signs reminiscent of Japanese writing became the main expressive element of his canvases. His language reached maturity in the early 1990s, in numerous painted and graphic series of different formats.

The exhibition presented works from 2003 to 2011. At its centre was a large abstract canvas, echoed in colour and rhythm by works on paper of various formats, each an independent work and at the same time part of a whole.

"The clearly expressed expressive gesture of his non-objectivity went through the crucible of the accelerated development of Soviet underground art of the last two decades, entering, together with it, into the stage of the existence of painting 'after the concept'." Marina Bessonova, catalogue of Nikolaev's solo exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery, 1993.