Oscar Rabin, b.1928

“This chicken, martyred like all poultry ready to be eaten, caused me lots of bother. The authorities saw in it an odious slander of Soviet Reality” O.Rabin, 1981

Orphaned at the age of four, Oscar Rabin was adopted by the artist Evgeny Kropivnitsky, who influenced him to study art and eventually became his mentor.

Unable to secure commissions following his expulsion from the Surikov Art Institute for his nonconformist views, Rabin worked on the railway as a loader. The Sunday get-togethers he organised with fellow artists and poets at his home in Liazonovo, led to the formation the most prominent group of unofficial artists working in Moscow.

His efforts to bring unofficial art to a wider public meant he was pursued doggedly by the authorities, culminating in the infamous clash between artists and government bulldozers at the 1974 open air exhibition which he organised in Belyaevo.

Oscar Rabin was the first unofficial artist to exhibit his work outside the Soviet Union. The unprecedented show at the Grovesnor Gallery, London in 1965 is widely acknowledged as being a critical turning point in the development of this artistic movement.

Chicken in the Suburbs is a superb example of the acerbic artistic wit which earned Rabin the sobriquet of ‘Solzhenitsyn in art’. Rabin believed the key to revealing the true image of Russia were everyday items. Similar to methods used in the Theatre of the Absurd, Rabin alters the significance of ordinary objects by glorifying them in art. The plucked, oversized, dead bird takes on a quasi-divine presence in the composition. Underlining this religious sentiment is the holy family barely visible to the left of the canvas, a familiar motif in Rabin’s work and symbol of the independent artist’s lack of refuge in Soviet Russia.