Stanislav Savitski conducts academic research in the field of the intellectual history of modernism, Soviet literature, and culture, teaches the history of contemporary art, curates exhibitions, and writes on art in St Petersburg since 2000. The collection of materials he has assembled and donated to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is split into two thematic blocks.

The first block brings together documents collected by Savitski during work on his dissertation about Leningrad’s unofficial literature from 1960 to the 1980s. It contains copies of manuscripts and typewritten texts of literary and theoretical works by members of the groups Helenukty (Vladimir Erl, Andrey Mironov, Viktor Nemtinov, Alexei Khvostenko, et al) and VERPA (Alexei Khovstenko, Anri Volokhonsky) and by Boris Kudryakov and other authors; photographs of underground writers of the 1960s; photographs of unofficial writers taken by Savitski in the early 2000s; select samizdat periodicals.

The second block features materials related to Russian contemporary art from 1990 to the 2010s. It contains several hundred booklets, flyers, press releases, and invitation cards to events organized by St Petersburg institutions and self‑organizing groups, including Pro Arte Foundation and the art galleries Borey, Lyuda, Navicula Artis, Anna Nova, Modernariat, ART re.FLEX, and others; short‑run publications released to accompany various curatorial and art projects; objects by St. Petersburg‑based artists; over fifty catalogues of contemporary art exhibitions and festivals.

Stanislav Savitski (b. 1971, Leningrad) is an art and literature historian, art critic, author, and curator. He has a Candidate of Sciences degree in Theory and History of Art from the Russian State Institute of Art History and a PhD in Literature from the University of Helsinki. Savitski is Associate Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Practices in the Field of Arts at St. Petersburg State University and Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Linguistics at the Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg. He is the author of the books The Underground. History and Myths of Leningrad’s Unofficial Literature (2002, in Russian), A Look at St. Petersburg Art of the 2000s (2011, in Russian), and A Private Person. L. Y. Ginzburg in the Late 1920s‑Early 1930s (2013, in Russian). Savitski lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Alexander Morozov. What do you see?