FOMA JAREMTSCHUK
"Foma Jaremtschuk was born in a remote village in Siberia. He never learned to draw and finished only three grades in a rural primary school. No facts about his life until the age of twenty-nine are known. He became a victim of the Stalin-regime and after being arrested for ”slandering the USSR“ in 1936, he was sent to a labor camp. In 1947, he was found to have a mental disorder and moved from the labor camp to a closed mental hospital.
During his eleven-year stay in that hospital, Jaremtschuk made his ink and pencil drawings in which with the use of strongly expressive figures, harmonious space scenes, and dark creatures from some alien world were depicted.
After being moved to another mental institution for severely mentally ill patients, the artist died in 1986. (from Galerie Zander : galerie-zander.de)
"Jaremtschuk is that rare example of a classic art brut artist, one who was forced to exist in an isolated community away from the influence of the world and art history, hence these dark mesmeric drawings have only come to the public's attention in recent years." (from Henry Boxer Gallery: outsiderart.co.uk/)
"...The tent is good and warm; everything is so comfortable, so cosy. Everything is arranged here so fucking awesomely. Inside the tent, it is warm; even my ass and my entire back are bathed in sweat; it’s also a little wet behind my ears. I am so weary that it seems as if the button has become swollen and lies there like a dumpling; small buttons appear to grow out of it. They becoming thick and lay down on the throat. It presses down, so that one cannot breathe and everything starts to swell. And all the sounds begin to swell like the buttons and become bloated. Everything swells and one doesn’t want to touch anything. One is nauseous and wants to vomit. Inside the head, a brown button with four holes begins to swell... " (from: Jan Kaps Gallery: jan-kaps.com)
