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Ilya Gaponov
about the artist
Ilya Gaponov was born in 1981 in Kemerovo and graduated from the Vera Mukhina St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Design (Mural Painting Department, class of Prof. Kuznetsov). He currently lives and works in St. Petersburg.
Together with his friends, Gaponov founded an artistic community whose studios were housed on the top floor of a building on Nepokoryonnykh Prospect (translated as ‘Avenue of the Undefeated’), resulting in the group being called The Undefeated. Working on industrial landscapes, portraits of workers, and paintings celebrating the exploits of coalminers, Ilya uses bitumen paint manufactured from coal mined in his home region of Kuzbass.
