Civilization #1.

One of the most significant artists of the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) underground during the Soviet era, Gleb Bogomolov is still at center stage of the city's artistic life. His art has survived changes in tastes and fashions due to its inimitable philosophical lyricism and proprietary color wizardry behind which one discerns professional culture of the gentlest texture. His paintings combine passion and the ability to conjure up a personal painterly world of striking relevance. "Everything that has ever existed, concerns us." These words of the master aptly define both his world outlook and his creative practice. His paintings are rarely representational, but fine associative links with the material world do percolate, albeit that world is rather taken from memory than from the immediate reality. At the core of Bogomolov's art lie reminiscences of Ravenna's mosaics, medieval Russian frescoes, and Tuscany's Renaissance, but they are no more than distant echoes. The anguish of being, and the imperishable value of art live in his twilit inflorescences permeated with a sense of tragedy overpowered by the magic spell of his art.