Kofman Andrey

Andrey Kofman was born in 1954, in Moscow. Since early years he has been interested in drawing and literature and after leaving school he faced a tough choice of a professional career. He entered the Spanish department of the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. However, he didn't give up art and he did the painting courses at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov. In 1973 he started doing oil paintings. Generally they were landscapes and still lives in bright colors. The turning point in his creative activity came in 1980, after the trip with the folk expedition to the Russian North. Severe and majestic nature of the North along with peculiar mindset of the locals, filled with magic and animism, the artist was so impressed that he changed his style and the subject of his artworks radically. Groping for his own artistic language, he departed from the cave art pastiche and came to deeper and more meaningful evocation of the folk view of life.

His scientific activity contributed to that: having done his postgraduate studies Andrey Kofman did his master's thesis (1982), then his PhD (1998) and became an expert in folk art, literature and history of Latin America. The very subject of the author's studies; the Indian and Afro-American mythology as well as the "magic realism" of Latin American literature had a great impact on his artwork through which he was trying to express a vibrant feeling of the uniform mythological root of the culture.

Since the end of the 1980s Andrey Kofman has been regularly taking part in exhibitions: 8 personal shows in Moscow and a few ones abroad: in Spain, Mexico and Brazil. Artworks by Andrey Kofman are represented in private collections in the above mentioned countries, as well as in Sweden, USA, Bulgaria, France and Germany.