Oleg Tselkov (1934 — 2021) One of the leading figures of Soviet unofficial art, Oleg Tselkov developed a distinguished and immediately recognisable artistic language, in spite of the constraints of the oppressive autocratic regime, and continued to mature in the Soviet Union and during his semi-forced immigration to France in 1977. As the artist recounts: ‘I proved to myself and to others that even under totalitarian communist pressure one can preserve one’s courage, individuality and do one’s work in keeping with one’s own preferences and taste. Although a whole system was created to prevent the appearance of individuals like me, not only I existed, but I had held out. And I was not the only one’ (quoted in Y. Aleshkovsky et al., Tselkov, Milan, 1988, p. 293).