Borkin (born 1932), The Blue Ogre, collages and acrylic on canvas, 1987

Borkin. Born in nice in 1932. The blue ogre, collage with old papers and acrylic. 1987. Paper collages on canvas. Signed and dated top left. 30 X 25cm. Born in nice on may 27, 1932, borkin is an anonymous french visual artist and painter. Leaving doubts about his identity and his true professional career, he declares to have been a doctor, lawyer, notary and 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 are present from 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, ended up in paris for similar reasons, knowing that her family was part of an intellectual elite. He says he was "electrocuted" by beatlemania, as if "artistic expression had to overflow everywhere in our lives": music, painting, sculpture, everything was for him a pretext for madness and excess, but above all for the 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 shocks when the work is presented, but the impact is short-lived, the emotion must be renewed each time you pass in front of the work". Borkin's real artistic turning point came when he discovered the works of raymond hains and jacques villeglé: "my way of seeing things with them radically changed my life!" a different worldview made me a different man!” borkin says he is close to hains and villeglé. He describes himself as being at the same time “close”, “friend”, “spiritual student” or speaks of “guru” for villeglé.