Biography

24 September 1958

Timur Novikov is born in Leningrad. Lives in house number sixty on Liteiny Prospect.

1965

Begins school and attends drawing classes at the Dzerzhinsky District House of Pioneers.

1969—1972

Lives with his mother in Novaya Zemlya.

1973

After returning from Novaya Zemlya, Novikov joins the young art historians club at the State Russian Museum.
Enrolls in the lacquer and paint technology program at the Chemicals Industry Technical College.

1975

Drops out of the Chemicals Industry Technical College "for the sake of [his] appearance"- that is, because he does not want to cut his long hair as required by the college's ROTC instructors. Works as a projectionist, first at the Titan cinema, then at the Volodarsky Palace of Culture.

1977

Joins the Chronicle (Letopis) group. Takes part in apartment exhibitions with the group.

1978

Novikov launches his first curatorial project: for forty rubles a month, he rents the former Our Lady of Shestakov Church, where he organizes the Cyril and Methodius Studios. On June 2, he opens an apartment exhibition that is raided by the police. With their help, the artists spontaneously move their show to the street.






Exhibition Cyril and Methodius. Church of Madonna of Shestakov.
Leningrad, June 2, 1978. T. Novikov's archive.
1979

Takes part in The Show of Ten, at the House of Folk Arts.



Exhibition Cyril and Methodius. Church of Madonna of Shestakov. Leningrad, June 2, 1978.
T. Novikov's archive. 

 



The Show of Ten. House (Theater) of Folk Arts, Leningrad, 1979
1980

Opens the ASSA Gallery in his communal flat at Voinov Street, 24. The gallery would exist until



Oleg Kotelnikov’s solo show. ASSA Gallery. Leningrad, 1983. O. Kotelnikov’s archive.

Works at the Russian Museum, first as a boiler plant operator, then as an electrician. Novikov is fired in 1982 for "avant-gardism." Novikov meets the artist Maria Spendariova at a show of Mikhail Larionov's works at the Russian Museum. Around this same time, in Moscow, Novikov meets other artists of the first Russian-Soviet avant-garde— Alexander Tyshler, Alisa Poret, and Maria Sinyakova-Urechina.


1981

Joins the Society for Experimental Visual Art (TEII), the first union of unofficial artists in Leningrad. The TEII holds its first show in the apartment of Natalia Kononenko, on Bronnitskaya Street.



The Show of Group "TEII" at Bronnitskaya street. Leningrad, 1981. T. Novikov Archive.
1982

At the first officially sanctioned TEII show, at the Kirov Palace of Culture, Novikov and Ivan Sotnikov carry out a punk action to express their disagreement with the rules: they present a square-shaped aperture in an exhibition stand as the "Zero Object".



Zero Object. Kirov House of Culture. Leningrad, 1982. T. Novikov Archive.


Novikov forms the New Artists group with Evgenij Kozlov, Ivan Sotnikov, Kirill Khazanovich, Oleg Kotelnikov, and Georgy Gurjanov. They are later joined by Sergei Bugaev (Afrika), Yevgeny Yufit, Vadim Ovchinnikov, Valery Cherkasov, Vladislav Gutsevich, Andrei Medvedev, Inal Savchenkov, Andrei Krisanov, Oleg Maslov, Alexei Kozin, Oleg Zaika, Viktor Tsoi, and The New Composers (Igor Verichev and Valery Alakhovj. The first New Artists show (featuring Novikov, Sotnikov, and Khazanovich) takes place at the Light Industry and Textiles Institute.



The first exhibition of The New Artists. Textile and Light Industry Institute. Leningrad, 1982.
T. Novikov's archive.