Was born in 1949, graduated from the Moscow Art School, then from the Moscow Poligraphical Academy. Specializes in etching. His works are in art museum collections of Russia, and in galleries and privat collections all over the world.

Was born in 1949, graduated from the Moscow Art School, then from the Moscow Poligraphical Academy. Specializes in etching. His works are in art museum collections of Russia, and in galleries and privat collections all over the world.

"Yuriy Nozdrin has brought a standard of professionalmastery and artistic accomplishment to the graphicarts which is virtually unimaginable. In the storms andwhirlwinds of postmodern freedom there is scattered aprecision and sharpness of drawing, a painstakingnessin execution, the splendour of a musical compositionbut one possessing the stature of a full-fledgedsymphony. Absolutely contemporary in creativepersonality with a characteristic freedom of idea andoriginality, Nozdrin has superbly taken in his grasp ingenuine, full-fledged school of graphic art with all ofits diversity and searchings. He has restored theculture of the graphic, modest in dimensions butworked in detail with humour, using convincingsubjects which instantly catch the eye and always bearthe imprint of illumination that lights up first one andthen another fragment of the imaginary slipping intoreality.

Nozdrin's etchings develop and in their own wayadvance a different aspect of the tradition of the 1920-30s which was cut off. The masters of those daysachieved perfection in combining a precise watercolourpatch with the beauty of a structured line: delicate,almost playing on the surface but at the same time«controlling» strictly the structure of the compositionconditioned by the plastic arts but exceptionallyspecific in spirit and form. Nozdrin has masteredmagnificently this complex of aesthetic methods,though they are employed to express a whollydifferent spiritual condition and idea. In place of theromance of bathing places, zoos, the renewed Orient,and urban life of the 1930s which now seemmelancholy and bitter, there comes a philosophicalcommitment, a freedom to treat with people astemporary strata and a fantastical combination of adense subject-matter, a calligraphic hand, and adecorative theatricalness all wrapped up superbly intoan organised composition.

Yuriy receives his inspiration, his «messages», fromevery conceivable epoch. He reveals something othimself in the happy and sad letters from heroes ofvarious periods and, echoing their soul, writesexquisite throughtful graphic replies in the besttradition of the epistolary album-genre, lie especiallyloves the Middle Ages, both Russian and Western. Itis the tragic element which moves him; he delights inthe candour of feelings, and is joyous in the fullblooded laughter at one of the most complex ofhistorical eras. In being transformed into the modernconsciousness by a fantastist of exceptional talent, thisimpulse gives birth to a satiated and many-sidedpicturesque world which at first glance may seemabsurd. If, however, you attentively view thepersonages in each: monsters and devils, animals andbirds, mermaids and people, fish, plants and persistentspermatozoons entwined by threads of mutualinterrelationship, you begin to comprehend the livinglogic of each work, cycle, album, or suite - in all acolossal flow of constantly creative work, eachautonomous but inextricably linked with the others."