John Milner

RUSSIANS ABROAD

John Milner
Kirill Sokolov: “Never an Emigre”

№3 2005 (08)

Kirill Sokolov was an unforgettable character, a cultural ambassador in a boiler-suit, indifferent to the impression he produced, obsessed by art; the creative urge to draw, paint and sculpt and the pedagogic urge to organize the propagation of Russian culture in the West and vice versa. This latter mission, which was laid on him by the circumstances of his personal life, he implemented through arranging exhibitions and, from 1975 when he made the acquaintance of the editor and publisher Frank Malina, through his work as co-editor for LEONARDO, a journal which seeks to link art and science and to present artists to its readership through their own statements. Sokolov organized a whole panorama of publications on individual Russian artists beginning with Vladimir Favorsky whose seminal role as practitioner and theoretician was of great importance to his own work as engraver and illustrator.