Special
Chemiakin Original Face
This compelling ink drawing by Mihail Chemiakin (b. 1943), titled Original Face, exemplifies the artist’s signature approach to psychological portraiture and surrealist abstraction. Created in 1980, the work captures multiple faces entwined within a continuous, elegant line—each one emerging from the other in a dreamlike procession. A subtle wash of color highlights the central features, imbuing the composition with haunting expressiveness.
Chemiakin, a founding member of the St. Petersburg nonconformist art movement, developed his own visual language rooted in the metaphysical and the grotesque. Original Face is a striking example of his early Paris-period works—complex yet economical, where identity and transformation intersect within a single graphic gesture.
Signed lower right in bold ink, with the inscription “Greece 1980,” this drawing is framed and matted under glass. It is a rare and desirable piece for collectors of Chemiakin’s early original works, particularly those interested in his exploration of the human condition through mask-like visages and symbolic distortion.
Medium: Ink and colored pencil on paper
Date: 1980
Signature: Signed and inscribed by the artist, lower right
Provenance: From a private collection, originally acquired in the 1980s
