Sverdlovsk, 1933, Russia. Lives and works in Moscow.
Erik Vladimirovich Bulatov is one of the founders of the Moscow conceptual school. In his early works from the 1960s, Bulatov studied the principles of interaction between surfaces and space as a philosophical conception of the painting and space. This was an important stage for his work and clearly exhibited the influence of Falk on Bulatov, who called Falk, as well as Favorsky, his teacher. In the early 1970s, beginning with his work “Horizon” Bulatov started developing a new, personal style, bringing together standard natural landscapes with large symbols from posters and transparent slogans. As a result, the artist manages to illustrate the absurdity of a reality, overflowing with symbols of Soviet propaganda, in an extremely accessible way. For Bulatov, space was always many-layered: either texts from slogans or recognizable symbols were placed over the tops of images. Underlining the contrast between propaganda and reality, Bulatov’s work approaches Sots Art, but his main goal remains studying the border between the art space and the social space. From June to October 2013 the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco honoured Erik Bulatov with a retrospective. Bulatov's works have appeared in nearly every important exhibition on 20th Century Russian Art, including RUSSIA! at the Guggenheim Museums in New York, USA (2005) and Bilbao, Spain (2006), and Berlin- Moscow / Moscow-Berlin 1950–2000, Tretyakow-Galerie, Moskau, Russia (2003), and Martin-Gropius- Bau, Berlin, Germany (2004), or Traumfabrik Kommunismus. Die visuelle Kultur der Stalinzeit, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt / Main, Germany (2003). He was also featured at the 43rd Venice Biennale (1988) and the Third Moscow Biennale (2009). His solo exhibitions have appeared at mamco – Musee d’art moderne et contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland (2009/2010) and at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2007), at the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (2006), and the Tretyakow-Galerie, Moskau, Russia (2003 and 2006).