Oscar Rabine

From 1946 to 1948, he studied at the Academy of Arts in Riga. In 1948-1949, he studied at the Vassili Surikov Art Institute in Moscow from where he was expelled for formalism. In the late 1950s, together with his painter wife Valentina Kropiwnicki, he became the founder of the informal art group Lianozovo. In the spring of 1974, Rabin was the initiator and one of the main organizers of the exhibition of works by nonconformist artists in Belyayevo, the Bulldozer Exhibition. In 1978, during a trip to France, he was refused Soviet citizenship by a special decree of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In 1985, he acquired French nationality. In 1990, Perestroika re-established its right to Russian citizenship. In 2006, the Russian Ambassador to France returned his Russian passport to him. In 2007, he exhibited his works at the Pushkin Museum.