Evgeny Mikhnov-Voytenko
Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko is an abstract artist, one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad underground.
Born in Kherson, in 1939 he moved to Leningrad. During the Great Patriotic War he was evacuated to Semipalatinsk. Upon his return, he studied at the Scandinavian department of the Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (1951–1954), at the Theater Institute (1954–1958), where he attended classes with the famous theater artist Nikolai Akimov. After graduation, he refused to work in the theater and got a job at the Leningrad Painting and Design Art Factory, where he received orders until the 1970s.
Since the mid-1950s, Mikhnov-Voitenko was one of the first Soviet artists to work in an abstract-expressionist manner. Combining in his experience a theatrical background, co-creation and communication with the most talented authors of his time (Aronzon, Knaifel, Ponizovsky), the artist created not only an original aesthetics of spontaneous painting, but also a philosophy of his art.
