Grisha Bruskin (Гриша Брускин, born 1945, Moscow) is a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker whose work fuses the visual language of Jewish mysticism with the symbols of the Soviet state. He studied at the Art Department of the Moscow Textile Institute (1963–68) and joined the Artists’ Union in 1969.
Fundamental Lexicon
Bruskin became internationally known in 1988, when his gridded painting Fundamental Lexicon (1986) sold at Sotheby’s landmark Moscow auction for £242,000 against a £17,000 estimate — then a record for Soviet contemporary art. He moved to New York that year.
Notable works
- Alefbet (1984)
- Fundamental Lexicon (1986)
- Life Above All (1999), a triptych for the Reichstag in Berlin
- H-Hour (2012), awarded the Kandinsky Prize “Project of the Year”
Bruskin works between Moscow and New York; his work has been shown at the Multimedia Art Museum Moscow and in major surveys of Soviet and post-Soviet art.