Grisha Bruskin

Who is Grisha Bruskin?

Grisha Bruskin is a Russian Jewish painter, active until 1989 in the Soviet Union, and since 1989 in the United States.

Bruskin's Soviet-era work was nonconformist and largely dealt with being Jewish in the Soviet Union. Many of his works reference Kabbalah, though generally without putting forth any narrative interpretation. His 1982 painting In the Red Space attracted unfavorable attention from the authorities for depicting a golem wearing a Soviet uniform, carrying a synagogue out of which people are falling, all against a red background. Subsequent exhibitions of his works in Vilnius in 1983 and Moscow in 1984 were closed by the authorities soon after they opened. As glasnost eased official censorship, he gained significant attention when a painting dealing with the dominance of signs and symbols in Soviet society, Fundamental Lexicon, sold at a 1988 Sotheby's auction in Moscow for £220,000. In 1989, he emigrated to the United States, where he became one of the more successful Russian-Jewish émigré artists.