Alexander Roitburd (1961, Ukraine)

Alexander Roitburd was born in Odessa in 1961. He graduated from Odessa Pedagogical University, Department of Fine Arts in 1983. Roitburd
is known for his paintings, installations, video, and performance art. He has been very active in artistic community as an art critique, art curator,
publicist, communicator and intellectual who greatly contributed to establishing of post-Soviet contemporary art trends in Odessa, Kiev and Moscow. The artist was one of the founders of Ukrainian trans-avant-garde in 1980s.

In 1999 Roitburd produced a video after the film by Sergei Eisenstein ‘Battleship Potemkin’. The video was bought by MoMA, New York. In 2001
the video project by Roitburd was part of Italian Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale. From 2000 Roitburd lived and worked in New York. The artist returned to Ukraine in 2002 to become the director of Marat Guelman Gallery in Kiev. For the last seven years Roitburd is primarily producing large size narrative figurative paintings that bear strong sense of political irony, mythological illusion and philosophical and humanitarian discourse. Works by Roitburd were exhibited in New York by White Box Gallery at the ‘New Ukrainian Painting’ show in 2008.
On June 26, 2009 a painting by Roitburd entitled Goodbye Caravaggio, 2008, lot 179 sold at Phillips de Pury & Co. in London for £58,850.00. This
is the record price paid for a work by contemporary Ukrainian artist at auction. The artist lives and works in Kiev.

Yoga, 2008-2009
color on canvas
200 х 150 cm