Vitaly Komar was born in Moscow in 1943, graduated from the Stroganov School of Art and Design in 1967, and has beeen living in New York since 1978. He was one of the founders of the Sots Art movement (Soviet Pop/Conceptual Art). Vitaly Komar worked in collaboration with Alex Melamid from 1973 to 2003. Their collaborative work started in the 1960s in Moscow, where they rather than following the dictates of Socialist realism they rather commented on power and popular culture using a wide range of media. In 1978, Komar and Melamid became United States residents and since then held numerous exhibitions worldwide. In the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova - MSUM you can see their painting Smooth Sailing with Lenin, 1985. In their last major project together, Symbols of the Big Bang, Komar and Melamid began exploring notions of spirituality. Komar continued this pursuit in his individual work after they separated, uniting symbols of different faiths and concepts of spirituality with historical and autobiographical references.

The lecture will be in English.