Maxim Karlovich Kantor, a Russian painter and writer. Maxim Kantor was born in Moscow in 1957. He is an artist, a writer, an essayist and a social commentator of an openly philosophical turn, and, as he uses to say, one profession proceeds from the other. He has lived and lives in Moscow and in many different European countries. As a painter Maxim Kantor, who states that "he didn't want to study under anybody and his father was all he needed" was deeply influenced by Michelangelo, Mantegna, Goya and Petrov Vodkin. In 1977, aged twenty, he founded in Moscow the underground group Red House which organized a number of one-day shows the most resounding of which took place in 1982 in the Moscow Institute of Philosophy. Soon he became known and appreciated in many different countries and held exhibitions in a great number of important museums. Maxim Kantor never joined any group and remained a single speaker with his own independent message. His personal style was never influenced by fashions or current streams. In the Soviet time he became a watchful observer of society and a sharp political critic and holds fast to this line up to now both in his country and in the West. [More at Wikipedia]

December 22nd, 1957 in Moscow (Age 66)