Oskar Rabin (b. 1928)

In the 1950s and 60s, the small town of Lianozovo in the suburbs of Moscow was home to the first group of unofficial Non-conformist artists. Evgenii Kropivnitskii, the teacher of the young Avant-garde artists lived in an old hut where the group, known as the Lianozovskaya, formed. Members included Oscar Rabin, Valentina and Lev Kropivnitskii and Vladimir Nemukhin.

Oscar Rabin remembered: "We continued to live in the hut in Lianozovo, as we didn't have a telephone, we declared that Sunday would be a 'visiting day'. Our visiting day was hugely sucessful. At times, a whole group of visitors would fill the narrow road from the station to our hut.

In 1962, when the present painting was executed, an exhibition at the Moscow Division of Soviet Artists took place, which regrettably became famous after Krushchev expressed harsh criticism of the new tendencies in art. As a result, Evgenii Kropivnitskii and Ernst Neizvestny were excluded from the Moscow Division of Soviet Artists. In Oscar Rabin's painting, beside the name of the village 'Lianozovo' the number 13 appears, signifying a baker's dozen, sign of danger and the mark of an outcast.