Anatoly Purlik

b. 1956

Anatoly Purlik constructs scenes in which colour becomes the primary carrier of human presence and psychological state.

“I live only through colour.”
In his art, colour establishes tension and repose, shaping the internal rhythm of the work.

“My art is my theatre.” Within this theatre, the human figure becomes the central protagonist. Purlik’s works unfold as scenes of life, in which the composition is structured around human presence.

Purlik received his artistic training in Irkutsk and graduated from the Leningrad Art Institute (now Saint Petersburg). During this period, he created his first significant works, in which his approach to form and colour took shape as key elements of artistic thinking.

In the 1990s, the artist lived and worked in South Korea, where his practice focused on oil painting on canvas and increasingly centred on the exploration of human presence. Later, while working and travelling in Italy and Germany, Purlik developed work on paper, which came to occupy an independent and equal place within his artistic language alongside painting.

The work Polina and Platon (2006) clearly reflects his method. Using minimal means, the artist constructs a dialogue between figures marked by subtle internal movement. Blue tears, barely indicated through colour, become the compositional focal point.

Even within a black-and-white palette, as in Vasily and Kazimir (2010), colour continues to operate as a principle of artistic thinking.

Works by Anatoly Purlik are held in museum collections including the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art; the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum; the Novosibirsk State Art Museum; the Tomsk Regional Art Museum; and the Serpukhov Historical and Art Museum, as well as in private collections across Europe, the United States, and Asia.

Selected solo exhibitions include the Osterfeld Cultural Center, Germany (1995); Gallery Korea, Seoul (1997); Galerie des Kurhauses, Bad Herrenalb (1999); and APERTO LIBRO at the Gallery of Pictorial Art of the Moscow Union of Artists, Moscow (2021).

Selected group exhibitions include Club Spittelkolonnaden, Berlin (1997); Kunstoffwerk Bosch, Stuttgart (1999); and Art Salon at the Central House of Artists, Moscow (2003).