Nikolay Blagodatov

Nikolay Blagodatov
Born	December 21,1937 Leningrad, USSR
Citizenship	Russian
Occupation	collector of Soviet Nonconformist Art

Blagodatov Nikolay Innokentjevich

Conversation with Nikolai Innokentievich Blagodatov, recorded by I. R. Sklyarevskaya for the Oral History Foundation

Blagodatov Nikolay Innokentjevich is a famous Soviet Nonconformist Art collector in USSR and Russia. He is a member of the Section of Criticism and Art Criticism of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists.

Biography

Nikolay Blagodatov graduated from St. Petersburg State University of Water Communications in 1962. In 1975, he became interested in collecting works of modern art. At the moment, his collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art (1970-1990) is one of the most significant in Russia. . Since 1979, he has been writing articles about art (more than 250 articles). As a collector, organizer and participant of more than 50 exhibitions, including 8 personal collections. He is a partner of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists. He personally meets and with many representatives of Soviet Nonconformist Art.

Bibliography (selected)

• Subjective spaces of the city. — Petersburg Art History Notebooks, issue 67, St. Petersburg: AIS, 2021. — pp. 66-68. ISBN 978-5-906442-31-4
• The city as an artist's subjectivity. A group project in the format of an artist's book. Authors of articles: Parygin, Alexey Borisovich, Markov T. A., Klimova, Ekaterina Dmitrievna], Borovsky, Alexander Davidovich, Severyukhin, Dmitry Yakovlevich, Grigoryants, Elena Igorevna, Blagodatov N. I. (in Russian and English). — St. Petersburg: T. Markov Publishing House. 2020. — 128 p.: color. il. ISBN 978-5-906281-32-6
• Bernstein B. M., Blagodatov N. I. Alexander Gurevich / Alexander Gurevich (in Russian and English). — St. Petersburg: Retro, 2008. — 192 p. — ISBN 978-0-615-19470-7.
• Blagodatov N., Herman M., Dmitrenko A.; scientific hands. Petrova E. N. Alexey Stern. Graphics, painting, sculpture: Exhibition catalog (in Russian and English). — St. Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2004. — 144 p.
• Walking with memories // THE! - 2004. - No. 4.
• Art is search, search is art. — Neva, No. 2, 2002. pp. 253-255.

Alexander Gurevich does not give us direct answers, his speech is complicated. The author's thought should be caught in the most complex pattern of images, references, memories, quotations, hints, obscure ambiguous symbols, signs that, perhaps, only pretend to be symbols. He is not some realist who, wanting to portray the collapse of the bank, depicts the collapse of the bank, having conceived to paint boatmen on the Volga, sends the Volga and portrays boatmen. He belongs to another time and he is different. Who is he?