biography
Yuri Vassilievitch Titov, was born in 1928 at Strounino (62 miles from Moscow). He was 23 years old when he was graduated with an architecture degree. Married to Helena Stroieva he became famous as an abstract and icon painter. His works from the 60’s and the 70’s testify his opposition against Soviet regime, his large abstract paintings seems to be anachronistic in the middle of the Socialist Realism period. This paintings are followed by a large production of Christian iconography. After he had been exhibited in Moscow and in the USA he acquired a reputation as a political dissident which led the couple to fled the country, in the early 70’s and settled down in Paris. The migrant condition and the disillusion about the Western society broke his wife who committed suicide by hanging herself in 1975. Then Titov started to lose himself and to go back and forth at the psychiatric hospital. In 1999, Alexei Khvostenko, a sculptor and Russian poet, and Kamil Tchalaev, a composer, decided to make him live in an institution dedicated to elderly persons “Zemgor” where he died in 2017.
In “Zegmor” he started to draw mystic architectural projects and composed what he called “meta-poetry”. The whole is full of communications written in marker or in pen, addressed to his wife and his daughter. According to him, everything is linked “in one same node”. He was considering himself as an architect, creator of projects “mystically real, which could be materialized”. Titov said “there is everything in life, including nothing”. The past few years the Collection de l’Art Brut of Lausanne acquired several works of him.
selective exhibitions
the golden ratio laws, works from the collection treger/saint silvestre, oliva creative factory, são joão da madeira, portugal, from april 29th to september 30th, 2017.
back in the U.S.S.R. : figures de l’art brut russe 2, christian berst gallery, paris, january 22nd - march 5th, 2010
beyond the boundaries 2009, galerie obejet trouvé (christian berst), paris, september 11th - october 17th, 2009.
selective bibliography
exhibition catalogue, the golden ratio laws, works from the collection treger/saint silvestre, antonia gaeta, oliva creative factory, maiadouro, maia, 2017.
exhibition catalogue, élévations, collections bruno decharme et antoine de galbert, hommage à joseph ferdinand cheval, palais idéal du facteur cheval, hauterives, (april 30th – august 30th; 2015), text by barbara safarova, lienart ed. , 2015.
l'art brut 24, collection de l’art brut lausanne, co-edition collection de l'art brut and infolio, lausanne, 2013.
exhibition catalogue, back in the U.S.S.R. : figures de l’art brut russe 2, paris, christian berst gallery, lelivredart, 2010.
exhibition catalogue, une rentrée hors-les-normes, paris, objet trouvé gallery (christian berst), lelivredart, 2009.