Simon Kozhin

Biography

He was given the name Semyon after his great-grandfather, the Don Cossack Semyon Mikhailovich Dayshutov, who fought in the tank-borne infantry of the 3rd Guards Tank Army in the Second World War.

Kozhin was born on 11 March 1979 in Moscow; his father was an engineer, his mother a historian, director and teacher of English. In 1986–1988 he appeared several times in small film roles, among them at the Gorky Film Studio. From 1988, alongside school, he attended the Krasnaya Presnya Art School, and in 1990 he entered the Moscow Academic Art Lyceum named after Nikolai Tomsky, attached to the Russian Academy of Arts. With his classmates he travelled to paint outdoors: Velikiye Luki, Ryazan, the Solovetsky Islands and the towns of the Golden Ring. His lyceum diploma work was a series of illustrations for “A Complete Course of Russian History”.

In 1997 he entered the painting faculty of the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 2002 he worked in the landscape studio of Alexander Pavlovich Afonin, and in 2003 he defended his diploma. He had begun exhibiting as early as 2000. The date he left the lyceum is given differently: some data give 1998, others do not specify it; I give only the year he entered.

In 2001–2002 Kozhin painted a series of studies from life of the English village of Haddenham in Buckinghamshire, and an exhibition of his work was held there at the same time. Later came series on England, Malta, Ireland, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Spain and Italy (2005–2015). At the core of these works is the landscape of mood, with firm drawing and a restrained range of violet and blue half-tones. A separate cycle consists of night views: the Yeliseyev store on New Year’s Eve, St Basil’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Wellington Arch. In 2003 in Oxford, at the Ashmolean Museum, he saw the exhibition “Poetry of Truth”, with its huge watercolour sheets; after it he painted “Malta”, “The Mountains of Connemara” and “Notley Abbey in England” in watercolour, working on both dry and wet paper and doing without white.

In 2000–2006 he often painted still lifes on panel with a cradled backing, as the Flemish painters did: “Still Life with a Lobster”, “Still Life with Shells”, “Still Life with Flowers. In Imitation of Flemish Painting”.

Historical painting occupied him in 2001–2007: a series of sketches and paintings on the Patriotic War of 1812, the Russian name for the war against Napoleon’s invasion. It includes “Memorial Service for General Alexander Tuchkov on the Borodino Field”, “The Rubicon. A Crossing of the River by Denis Davydov’s Detachment” and “Napoleon’s Flight from the Cossacks”. These pieces were shown at exhibitions of the Primavera association at the Central House of Artists in Moscow. He also painted “Ivan Kupala. Fortune-Telling with Wreaths”, “Maslenitsa. Seeing Off Winter” and “New Albion”, with Francis Drake’s ship the Golden Hind. In technique he combines smooth painting with energetic brushwork and thick paint in the highlights, aiming for a layered effect.

His ties with film consist of a few episodes. In 2000 he drew the frame “Hands in the Theatre” for “Salieri”, the diploma film of his friend Platon Infante-Aran: huge hands direct the action in a theatre. His paintings served as a backdrop in the film “Love-Carrot 3”. In 2014 he made monochrome sketches and comics for the documentary “The People Who Made the Earth Round”, shown on Channel One in Russia on 22–23 February 2015. In 2004 he illustrated in acrylic a children’s book about Luciano Pavarotti, published in Korea, and made graphic sheets for the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

In 2006–2015 Kozhin’s works were shown at exhibitions and auctions of Russian painting in Russia, the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2011 he was awarded the Anton Chekhov commemorative medal. In 2019–2022, together with three other painters, he took part in painting the murals of the Church of the Archangel Michael in Chamzinka. He lives and works in Moscow today.