Vladimir Kovenatsky never escaped Soviet Russia before he died in 1986, but now the illustrator's underground works have surfaced in New York.A child prodigy, Kovenatsky received a prestigious commission to design The Collected Works of Jack London at age 19. Considered schizophrenic by some, he developed his visual skills by illustrating books, magazines, and filmstrips, but his secret passion was drawing cartoons. Displaying a cast of aliens, giants, and passed-out drunks, Kovenatsky's subversive drawings poked fun at the daily routine in the USSR. Kovenatsky is being hailed as a pioneer for modern cartoonists. "The work insists on free mental space and puts him in kinship with what was happening with artists here in the '60s," says Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman. Kovenatsky's work includes a picture book of childhood caricatures, a full-length autobiography, and hundreds of drawings. Check out a sample at www.moscowchannel.com/.
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Post-Soviet Resurrection
