Vladimir Nemukhin, The Joker

"I have painted ever since childhood, but I did not adopt a conscious attitude toward my work until 1943, when I met a pupil of Malevich's, a marvelous man and artist, Pyotr Yefimovich Sokolov, who gave me my first serious ideas about creative work as a whole. It was at his house that I read my first books on art. I was particularly impressed with Seurat, Cezanne, and the cubists. Without fully understanding any of these schools, I literally mixed Cubism with pointilism, and my first still-lifes were piles of boxes painted in pointilist style. Gradually my understanding of Cubism deepened. I developed a wider grasp both of this school and of Constructivism. But I was young and inexperienced and for a long time I was tossed from one direction to another - from Seurat to Cezanne, from Cezanne to Malevich". Vladimir Nemukhin