Borkin (born 1932), Newspaper Collage, Paper Collages, Newspapers and Books, 1985

Borkin born in nice in 1932 newspaper collage 1985 paper collages on plywood signed and dated lower center 26.5 X 33.5cm framed born in nice on may 27, 1932, borkin is an anonymous french visual artist and painter. Leaving doubt about his identity and his true professional career, he declares to have been a doctor, lawyer, notary and even a lumberjack. He has been active in paris, quimper and on the côte d'azur since the 1970s according to the dates of his known works. However, his urban collages or ephemeral graffiti have been present since the 1960s in paris and nice and its surroundings. His father, from a russian aristocratic family who fled the ussr during the bolshevik revolutions, met his future wife in paris. His mother, originally from odessa, found herself in paris for similar reasons, knowing that her family was part of an intellectual elite. He says he was as if "electrocuted" by beatlemania, as if "artistic expression should overflow everywhere in our lives": music, painting, sculpture, everything was for him a pretext for madness and excess, but above all for freedom to make a work from nothing, from common and insignificant everyday objects. Seduced by the concept of ready-made, he quickly tired of marcel duchamp's “artistic inaction”: “the idea is good and shocking when the work is presented, but the impact is short-lived, the emotion must be renewed each time we pass in front of the work.” borkin's real artistic turning point came when he discovered the work of raymond hains and jacques villeglé: “my way of seeing things around them radically changed my life! A different worldview made me a different man! ". Just like his professional career, borkin still leaves doubt about his relationships with hains and villeglé. He describes himself as being at the same time “close”, “friend”, “spiritual student” or also speaks.