Background

Roitburd was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on October 14, 1961.

Education

Alexander Roitburd graduated from the Department of Fine Art of the Odessa Pedagogical University (now the South Ukrainian K. D. Ushynsky National Pedagogical University) in 1983.

Career

Roitburd co-founded the New Art Association in Odessa in 1993, becoming its art director. From 1999 to 2001 he was the president of the association.

Alexander Roitburd created a video based on the film by Sergei Eisenstein, "Battleship Potemkin", in 1999. This video was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In two years, the video project by Roitburd was invited to become a participant of the Italian Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale.

From 2000 onward, the artist lived and actively worked in New York. The artist moved back to Ukraine in 2002 and received the post of the director of the Marat Guelman Gallery in Kiev. For the next seven years, Roitburd was producing mainly large size narrative figurative paintings. His artworks of this period of time bear a strong sense of political irony, mythological illusion as well as philosophical and also humanitarian discourse.

Works by Roitburd were exhibited at a number of shows around the world, for example, at Moderna Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2000; the Kiev History Museum, Kiev, Ukraine, and Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York, both exhibits took place in 2001; Contemporary Art Festival, Mosсow, Russia, and the Rebellminds Gallery, Berlin, Germany, in 2002; Karas Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine, in 2006, among others. He also held his exhibition in New York, which was organized by White Box Gallery in 2008.

At the Kiev Book Arsenal in 2016, there was a hall full of large-scale provocative works by Roitburd, a show dedicated to his oeuvre. Since March 2018 Alexander Roitburd has been serving as the director of the Odessa Fine Arts Museum. The artist currently lives and works in Odessa, Ukraine.

Achievements

• 

  Alexander Roitburd is one of the most extravagant and exceptional contemporary artists of Ukraine. He is widely known for his paintings, installations, videos and performances.
  
  Roitburd has greatly contributed to establishing post-Soviet contemporary art trends in Odessa, Kiev and Moscow. The artist was one of the initiators of Ukrainian trans-avant-garde in the 1980s.
  
  On June 26, 2009, a painting by Alexander Roitburd "Goodbye Caravaggio" (2008) was sold at Phillips de Pury & Co. in London for £58,850.00. This is the record price paid for an artwork by contemporary Ukrainian artist at auction.
  
  Nowadays, Alexander Roitburd's art is represented by such major museums as Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), The State Tretyakov Gallery, Zimmerli Art Museum, Duke University Museum of Arts, The State Museum of Contemporary Art "Tsaritsyno", etc.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Anna Karenina

  • The Raft of the Medusa. Version

  • Generosity of Alexander the Great

  • Untitled

  • Milkmaid of Bordeaux

  • Portrait of Boris Khersonsky

  • Melon

  • Rocks Near Purville

  • The wounded Kirasser Leaving the Field of Battle

  • The Vision to the Youth Bartholomew

  • Rembrandt

  • Tureen

  • Samurai

  • On the Rivers of Babylon

  • Putin

  • Squash

  • Augustine Roulin With Her Milk Son

  • The Burial of the Count of Orgaz

  • The Last Gospel of Being

  • Big Hello to a Forest Nymph of Lucas Cranach

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 004

  • Self-portrait

  • Louis XIV #3

  • The Cliffs at Dieppe

  • Languor of Jacob and Rachel

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 003

  • Rembrandt

  • Morning in a pine forest

  • Wife of the Factory Worker

  • Sacrifice of Isaac

  • The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp

  • Wines of Crimea

  • Samurai

  • Samurai

  • Samurai

  • Not a Day without Haloimes

  • The Dormant Tzadik

  • Susanna at her Bath

  • The Forge of Vulcan

  • Arrest of the Propagandist

  • Searching for the Victims. Sight

  • Melon

  • Samurai

  • Self Portrait

  • Acrobatic Etude

  • Gogol's acquisition

  • Self Portrait

  • Mistress And Maid

  • Girl student

  • Angelus

  • Pumpkin

  • Self Portrait with a Boot

  • Self Portrait

  • The Tribute Money

  • Narcissus

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 009

  • If there is no Water in the Tap. Dostoevsky

  • Self-portrait

  • Wines of Crimea

  • A Ball in Folies-Bergère

  • Chinese Casket

  • Live Money

  • Ulysses

  • Girl at the Piano (Overture To Tannhauser)

  • Louis XIV #5

  • Crushed Ace

  • The Raft of the Medusa

  • Good Bye, Caravaggio

  • Louis XIV #4

  • If there is no Water in the Tap. Warhol

  • The ecstasy of St. Theresa

  • Punished Infante

  • The Continence of Scipio

  • Self Portrait

  • Death of the Commissar

  • Nuns in Antarctica

  • Watermelon

  • Greetings from Gurzuf

  • Yelow Triangle

  • If there is no Water in the Tap, then Klichko have drunk

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 005

  • Self Portrait

  • Above Eternal Peace

  • Horse Political

  • The Order is given

  • Korovin in Gurzuf

  • The Well-Tempered Clavier

  • Samurai in Blue

  • Rural Concert

  • Chubais

  • Louis XIV #11

  • Blood sausage

  • Drink. Smoke. Fuck

  • Perseus and Andromeda

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 002

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 006

  • The Night Watch

  • Double Portrait

  • Children Running from a Thunderstorm

  • If there is no Water in the Tap. Gelman

  • Avignon Girls

  • Girl And Peacock

  • Fruit Dish

  • Iphigenia In Tauris

  • The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin

  • Hymn to demons and heroes

  • Freilehs

  • Сliffs at Port Gulfar

  • Psoy

  • Сliffs at Belle Ille

  • Self Portrait in Red

  • Untitled

  • Meditating Philosopher

  • Young Woman In A Spanish Dress

  • Louis XIV #10

  • If there is no Water in the Tap. Shevchenko

  • Pathetic Still Life

  • Lao Tzu, Confucius And The Frog

  • Ksenia Sobchak

  • Rembrandt

  • Bon Jour, Monsieur Cohen

  • Mamonov

  • Madonna In The Grotto

  • Annunciation

  • Partizan's mother

  • Oath in the Hall for the Ball Game

  • If there is no Water in the Tap. Pushkin

  • Samurai

  • If there is no Water in the Tap. Leo Tolstoy

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 008

  • Yellow Tableware

  • If there is no Water in the Tap, then the Beatles have drunk

  • Pumpkin

  • Tenth Wave

  • Samurai

  • Plate

  • Pushkin

  • Breakfast of the Aristocrat

  • Autumn Tango

  • Acrobatic Etude

  • If there is no water in the tap, then the Mahatmas have drunk

  • Seaweed gatherers

  • What the bird...

  • Flight To Egypt

  • Lenin

  • Potential Piece of Yellowness

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus #009

  • Avignon Girls. Version

  • Oath of the Horatii

  • Tea-party in Mytishchi

  • Three princesses of the Underground Kingdom

  • Dostoevsky

  • Louis XIV #13

  • The Old Virgins Plodding through the Winter Garden in Arles

  • Cupid And Psyche

  • Delegate

  • Self Portrait

  • Louis XIV #12

  • Сliffs at Etretat

  • Louis XIV #9

  • Louis XIV #6

  • Shalyapin In Gurzuf

  • Transport Is being adjusted

  • Buddha In The Desert. Version

  • The Great Odalisque

  • The Judgement of Paris

  • Music of Tchaikovsky, Lyrics of Mayakovsky

  • Multipushkin and the Don Juan List

  • Self Portrait

  • Lyudochka

  • Adam and Eve

  • Louis XIV #2

  • Mary And The Three Theological Virtues

  • Louis XIV # 8

  • Louis XIV #14

  • Timoshenko

  • The Birth of Venus

  • In search of JOHAR

  • Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth

  • Louis XIV #7

  • Harmony of the Illuminated Being

  • Interpreting the Torah

  • Roitburd VS Caravaggio. Opus # 001

Politics

Alexander Roitburd participated in Euromaidan. In 2014, after the Maidan, he claimed that the anti-Semitism of the Freedom Party was in the past, but after three years of Euromaidan, he called the party fascist and anti-Semitist.

In July 2018 Roitburd supported the open letter of Ukrainian cultural figures to the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov who was imprisoned in Russia.

Membership

Roitburd became one of the founding members of the New Art Association in 1993.

• New Art Association , Ukraine

  1993

Connections

Friend:

Oleksandr Hnylyzkyj

Oleksandr Hnylyzkyj (1961-2009) was a Ukrainian artist. He was a representative of such art movements as Transavantgarde, Conceptual Art and Contemporary. Hnylyzkyj tried his hand in painting, sculpture, photography and installation.

References

• Tampliiery Ukrainian edition.
  2016