The introduction to Joanna Stingray's autobiography (see below) provides background information about Leningrad‘s subculture, as well as the relation between the USSR and the U.S. in 1986, when Joanna Stingray's released the double album RED WAVE. 4 UNDERGROUND BANDS FROM THE USSR in America. Red Wave was the very first album of Leningrad underground bands Aquarium, Kino, Alisa, Strange Games .
The epilogue looks at how ‘Soviet bloc’ music was reviewed in the West on the examples of Boris Grebenshikov (Aquarium) and Kino. It also discusses how the language barrier between Russian and English affected Russian rock singers. Uploaded 10 June 2019

Chapters 23 and 24 from ‘Stingray in Wonderland’ in English

The 30th of March 2019 saw the book launch of the Russian edition of Stingray in Wonderland, Joanna Stingray's book of memoirs on her travels from Los Angeles to Leningrad in the 1980s. Focusing on the period from 1984 to 1987, it is the first part of Stingray's autobiography on her ‘Russian’ years, with volume two and three forthcoming. The book was co-authored with Joanna Stingray's daughter Madison and translated into Russian by Alexander Kan.

The excerpt from the English manuscript has been published by courtesy of the authors. Uploaded 10 June 2019.
Addentum 2023: "Red Wave", an English edition of Joanna Stingray's memoirs (part 1 + 2) was published in 2020 by DoppelHouse Press, Los Angeles, CA.

This article (Chapter 1) is an extended version of a text first published 12 June 2019. The text was completely revised after the release of Nachalnik Kamchatki by the Mosocw label AnTrop in 2021, which used E-E Kozlov original cover design. For chapters 2-5, see Article no. 109 below.


Uploaded 22 April 2022.

A photo documentation of visitors of the concerts on 15.3.1986 (Tele U, Bravo and Kino).

Uploaded 23 July 2019.

An exhibition including works by (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, Timur Novikov and Evgeny Yufit from the late 1980s.
15 November 2019 to 22 March 2020

Uploaded 29 November 2019.

For six years, between 1990 and 1995, the city of Nantes, France, organised a series of important cultural festivals called "Les Allumées". Each festival lasted for six days and was dedicated to a large international seaport: Barcelona (1990), Saint Petersburg (1991), Buenos Aires (1992), Naples (1993), Cairo (1994); the last one, Havana (1995) being canceled due to restrictions imposed by Cuba.

Uploaded 12 December 2019.

The exhibition "Nevski Prospekt Underground" was the visual art section of the Leningrad / Saint Petersburg edition of Les Allumées. It brought together some of the most important independent Leningrad artists and artist groups from the late 1980s, among them the Necrorealists,(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov and his collection "2x3m".

Uploaded 12 December 2019.

The first official Leningrad exhibition of the New Artists was also the first time the group’s name Новые художники (Novye Khudozhniki) was printed on a poster, and the exhibition booklet can be considered as the group’s first official catalogue.

Uploaded 5 February 2020.

The first electronic music festival in the USSR was held in 1988 in Vilnius. Among the other projects there was a side project of the New Composers called Science Fiction Club which later became widely developed and gave impetus to the project of the same name officially working from 1988 to 1992 in the Star Hall, Planetarium.

Uploaded 5 February 2020.

Public funds were allocated to the first official international New Artists exhibition tour, starting at the Kulturhuset, Stockholm, in August 1988 and ending in Liverpool in February 1989. Bluecoat, Liverpool‘s centre for the contemporary arts, was the fourth venue of this tour. Both the Stockholm and the Liverpool exhibitions became part of larger Leningrad festivals.
Artists at the Bluecoat Gallery: Sergei Bugaev, Oleg Kotelnikov, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, Andrei Krisanov, Andrey Kurmayetsev “Mertvyi”, Timur Novikov, Vadim Ovchinnikov, Inal Savchenkov, Ivan Sotnikov

Uploaded 24 April 2020.

In 1986, before perestroika became a trend, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov started to redesign Soviet symbols in a number of sketches – the letters CCCP, the star, the hammer, the sickle, a skyscraper, an airplane, figures, and others. “Rebranding” these symbols, he removed their political charge – their function as a tool for visual propaganda.

Uploaded 4 May 2020.

This text attempts to illustrate some aspects of early Soviet visual propaganda and its most important agent, Vladimir Mayakovsky, before concluding with some remarks about the Leningrad art group New Artists.

Uploaded 5 June 2020.

Taken together, the works the New Artists created in the 1980s form no unified picture of any native roots, simply because the Russian avant-garde itself offers multiple facets. My intention has been to collect, systemise and interpret some relevant facts that provide a more complex – even fragmented – picture of the New Artists’ creative heritage than Novikov’s unifying descriptions might suggest.

Uploaded 24 September 2020.

In January / February 1989, Liverpool saw two parallel New Artists exhibitions: the main exhibition of the New Artists which opened on 21 February at the Bluecoat Gallery with works coming directly from the previous New Artists' show in Copenhagen, and a second exhibition at the Tate Liverpool which, in all likelihood, had no specific title other than “exhibition of banners”.

Uploaded 4 October 2020.

The Mayakovsky Friends Club or Club of Friends of V.V. Mayakovsky (Клуб друзей В.В.Маяковского / Klub druzey V. V. Maiakovskogo) was a somewhat formalised hypostasis of the New Artists and a name the New Artists sometimes used (until 1990) to promote their own exhibitions and parties. Among those activities was a Mayakovsky Friends Club exhibition at the Leningrad NCh-VCh Club, organised on the occasion of Mayakovsky’s 95th birthday.

Uploaded 11 October 2020.

In 1988, the management of what is today The Palace of Culture and Science (at the Peterhof campus of St Petersburg University) invited (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov to an exhibition of his works, and Kozlov, on his part, invited Oleg Kotelnikov and Nikolai Veinert participate at the exhibition. On this occasion, Kozlov and Kotelnikov created a huge joint work displaying the lettering LENING-ACCEE–RAD.

Uploaded 17 October 2020.

In 1988, the New Artists entered a rather intense period of exhibitions, both at home and abroad. Some of these exhibitions were touring from one place to the next, although with different titles. Thus, Da Da Majakowski (Dionysus Gallery, Rotterdam, 25 March – 8 April 1988; also Da Da Mayakovsky), was the follow-up exhibition to 7 Independent Artists – Live from Leningrad (Young Unknowns Gallery, London, 2-27 February, 1988)

Uploaded 12 November 2020.

The article discusses (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov's approach to transforming his resource images in successive stages, a principle which may be defined as an Atlas of Ontology, of being and becoming. The on-going narrative progression of an image is demonstrated for the artist's early collages, but the same principle also applies to Kozlov's large archive of pictures from the 1980s – which have since acquired a secondary function, for the researcher, as an archival database to analyse the “Leningrad 80s”.

Uploaded 15 February 2021.

In the 1980s, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov extensively used the medium of black and white photography in his art, as documented by his large photo archive used for painted photo collages, books, figurative paintings, and more. In this article, I show how some technical features of the Soviet FED-2 camera and the SVEMA and TASMA black and white negative films the artist employed helped me to reconstruct the original filmstrip sequences.

Uploaded 3 May 2021.

The Society for Experimental Visual Art (TEII, 1981-1991) was an association of independent Leningrad artists founded before perestroika and tolerated by the Soviet authorities. It had its second large exhibition in April 1983, which was also (E-E) Evgenj Kozlov's first important participation in a public exhibition. Kozlov's diaries and visual material from the artist's own as well as from other archives provide the researcher with a rare opportunity to follow a complex process of his decision taking – of selecting or rejecting, through various stages, the paintings and works on paper to be exhibited.

Uploaded 18 July 2021.

In 1986, Timur Novikov and his friends set up the Club of Friends of V.V. Mayakovsky (Клуб друзей В. В Маяковского / Klub druzei V.V. Mayakovskogo 1986-1990) as an administrative branch of the New Artists  (Новые художники / Novye Khudozhniki, 1982-1989), and from late 1986 to 1989, the same artist names appear in both groups. This raises the question of whether these groups were identical or functionally different with respect to their activities.

Uploaded 17 August 2021.

In the Soviet Union, the anti-elitist idea of clubs offering recreational and educational activities – sport, reading, theatre, art etc. – was part of the concept of adult education. In a larger sense, Houses of culture and clubs were part of a global approach to create a new man, thereby demonstrating the superiority of the communist idea – and to convince the masses of it.

Uploaded 17 August 2021.

The NCh-VCh club, located on Kalyaeva, 5 (today Zakharyevskaya street, 5) constitutes a successful example of how Soviet underground artists and musicians used the new possibilities offered by the “Law on amateur associations and interest clubs” from 13 May 1986 to carry out their activities on larger scale.

NCh-VCh, pronounced N- tshe V- tshe, is an acronym for Nizkie Chastoty / Vysokie Chastoty (“Низкие Частоты / Высокие частоты”), or Low Frequency / High Frequency. New artist Oleg Kotelnikov, himself involved in punk-music, made up the name NCh-VCh for a band of rock musicians as an allusion to the rock band AC/DC, where the four letters stand for alternating current/ direct current.

Uploaded 17 August 2021.

In (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov's collection of his works, there is a collage from 1984 which was to become the cover of an иллюстрированный журнал, an illustrated magazine. The name of the editors, Новые художники, New Artists, stands right at the top, with Art and Fashion (Искусство — мода) next to it. This collage might actually be the first written mention of the New Artists as a group,.

Uploaded 27 October 2021.

In autumn 1987, Polish galerist Mirosław Zeidler organised an exhibition of Leningrad artists at his gallery Kantor Sztuki, Gdansk. Без ореола / Bez aureoli, or "Without a Halo", was one of the first exhibitions – or perhaps actually the first – of artists related to the New Artists group that took place outside the Soviet Union, albeit in a country from the socialist block.

Uploaded 19 November 2021.

An exhibition at Pierre Munkeborg Antik & Inredningar, Stockholm December 1988.
Artists: Sergei Bugaev • Georgy Guryanov • Vladislav Gutsevich • Evgeny Yufit • Oleg Kotelnikov • Evgenij Kozlov • Andrei Krisanov • Irena Kuksenaite • Timur Novikov • Vadim Ovchinnikov • Inal Savchenkov • Viktor Tsoy • and Armen Avetisian, Anatolyi Belkin, Gennady Zubkov.

Uploaded 11 December 2021.

Between 27 August and 25 September 1988, after two years of preparation, De Nya från Leningrad / The New from Leningrad, took place at the Kulturhuset, the cultural house of the City of Stockholm. The first major presentation of Leningrad’s New Artists group (1982-1989) outside their country included an additional festival programme with concerts, lectures and film screenings. 

In this article, I discuss what I defined as the project’s second phase, when, in the spring of 1987, the Swedish curatorial team and Leningrad artists and musicians elaborated a plan of action and selected the exhibits.

Uploaded 23 February 2022.

Regarding Alexander Boyko's colour reproductions of artworks, there is an important series shot during the 1984 New Artists exhibition at Timur Novikov’s studio and gallery ASSA. Thirty-two scans of slides with works by Kirill Khazanovich (3), Oleg Kotelnikov (10), Evgenij Kozlov (8), Timur Novikov (9), Ivan Sotnikov (1), and a collaborative work of Oleg Kotelnikov with Ivan Sotnikov came up in 2021, when I was working on Catherine Mannick’s archive of E-E Kozlov’s letters, mail art and other documents.

Uploaded 1 March 2022.

Produced for the exhibition at the Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, the catalague explores the close and often dynamic relationship between visual artists and musicians in Eastern Europe under communist rule.

Uploaded 7 May 2022.

Between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-eight, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov kept a diary, more exactly, four successive diaries, spanning the period from September 1979 to August 1983. In March 2022, these diaries, presented in a custom-made box, went to the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Special Collection at Harvard University, as part of a larger donation by Catherine Mannick, in Boston, and (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov and Hannelore Fobo, in Berlin.

Uploaded 19 June 2022.

In 2021 and 2022, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Special Collection at Harvard University received a large donation related to a crucial period of Soviet art – the years prior to perestroika and the perestroika period itself, as experienced by one the protagonists of Leningrad’s thriving art-scene: (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, a founding member of the New Artists group (1982-1989).

Uploaded 4 July 2022.

Kozlov's letter gives an example of how the artist combined vusual art and text. The letter is not dated, but it must have been written towards the end of October 1986, since Kozov sent Mannick's his birthday greetings (on Halloween), but also refers to her Leningad visit earlier that month (between the eighth and twelfth of October), stressing the importance of her visit.

Uploaded 4 July 2022.

Palace of Culture of the Moscow Electric Lamp Plant (ДК МЭЛЗ, DK MELZ), Moscow • 25. 3. to 17. 4. 1988

Uploaded 26 October 2022

Catherine Mannick and (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov started exchanging letters immediately after they first met in Leningrad in the summer of 1979, when the young American law student visited the Soviet Union together with her friend Ann; the correspondence, written in Russian, continued up to 1990.

Uploaded 2023.

Introduction • Letter A • Letter B • Letter C • Letter D • Letter E • Letter F • Letter G • Letter H • Letter I • Letter J • Letter K • Letter L • Letter M • Letter N Part 1 • Letter N Part 2 • Letter O • Letter P • Letter Q • Letter R

The Saigon was opened in 1964 on the ground floor of a large turn of the century building, formerly Hotel Moscow and today the Radisson Royal Hotel. Situated in the very heart of Leningrad, it soon became a hot spot for Leningrad’s bohemia, initially for writers, poets and artists and later, in the eighties, also for musicians and punks, until it was closed in March 1989 or December 1991

Uploaded 24 April 2023.

Questions: Sam Riley, Birmingham, as part of his PhD thesis about experimental music in Leningrad / St Petersburg, 1978-1996.
Answers: (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov
Text and research: Hannelore Fobo, 16 October 2023.

Uploaded 27 October 2023.

Die künstlerische Abbildung der Frau-Mann-Polarität ist ein Klassiker – es genügt, sich an die lange Reihe der Adam und Eva Darstellungen in der christlichen Kunst zu erinnern, beispielsweise von Lucas Cranach dem Älteren. Welche Möglichkeiten sieht die moderne Kunst für dieses Thema, ohne es in das enge Korsett der Zuweisung oder, heute aktuell, Kritik von Geschlechterrollen zu zwängen?
Text: Hannelore Fobo, 20. November 2023.

Veröffentlicht am 20. November 2023.