Exhibition: “Hello, Lesha! Alexey Anikeenok, Bulat Galeev and the Kazan Thaw”
The exhibition focuses on Alexey Anikeenok’s years in Kazan. It places his work within the artistic and spiritual searches of the city’s 1960s generation and reveals unexpected links with light music and the experiments of Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau.
The exhibition opens on 12 June. Anastasia Maksimova will lead curator tours at 14:00 on 14 and 15 June during the Summer Book Festival. Further tours take place on Fridays at 15:00. Entry is included with an exhibition ticket.
Alexey Anikeenok’s work was rarely exhibited during the Thaw. Its bright colour, radiant light and sometimes caricatural view of familiar scenes presented lived reality rather than the polished image approved by official censorship.
Music was central to Alexey Anikeenok’s life. Light was equally central to Bulat Galeev, who searched for new forms of technological art with the circle of collaborators he led. Archival photographs and documents recreate a cultural world in which sincerity, commitment and shared creative purpose sustained friendship and mutual support. These informal relationships also transformed familiar spaces across Kazan.
Technical universities hosted light shows and art exhibitions, while former religious buildings became venues for science and culture. The Peter and Paul Cathedral, for example, became part of the National Museum and housed restoration workshops and the Kazan Planetarium.
Alexey Anikeenok’s studio was located there. On the floor below, the “Northern Lights” installation filled the vaulted space with colour. It had been created by members of Prometheus, who imagined an art for the space age based on new forms of beauty and synthesis. The friendship between Alexey Anikeenok and Bulat Galeev reveals this period through the people and places that shaped it.
We thank Galeev Gallery, Vilora Kasimovna Chernysheva and Kirill Kuznetsov for providing archival materials.
