Nikritin Solomon (Sergey) Borisovich

Painter, graphic artist, art theorist. Representative of the post-futurist avant-garde. In 1909 - 1914 he studied at the Kiev Art School, then, on the recommendation of M. Gorky, at the private school of L. O. Pasternak in Moscow and in the workshop of A. Yavlensky in Petrograd. In 1917, upon returning to Kyiv, he attended the A.A. Exter studio school. Participant of exhibitions since 1916. For the first anniversary of the Red Army (1919) he decorated Khreshchatyk and Theater Square in Kyiv. In 1920, A.V. Lunacharsky was sent to Moscow to enroll in the final course of VKHUTEMAS. As a student, he took part in a traveling exhibition of works by Soviet artists in Moscow, Berlin, and Amsterdam, won first prize in a competition for designs for the design of Red Square for the Third Congress of the Comintern (1921), and created a series of plastic compositions “Architectonics.” In 1922, he headed the Method group (“Projectionists”), which viewed art as “the science of an objective system of organizing materials.” At the First Discussion Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary Art (1924), Nikritin presented not paintings, but “systemic signs” - drawings, photographs, three-dimensional models, handwritten theoretical calculations, thereby anticipating the emergence of conceptual art. Since 1930, Nikritin was the main artist of the Polytechnic Museum, and from the mid-30s to 1941, he was an artist at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. Nikritin’s personal exhibitions took place in 1926, 1927, 1928, 1951, 1955 and 1969. The artist’s works are in many museums, including the Karakalpak State Museum named after I.V. Savitsky.