Following is a review of an exhibition of work by the artist.

Eric Bulatov was born in Sverdlovsk in 1933 and was raised in Moscow. He began his studies at the Moscow School of Art and finished at the Surikov Institute in 1958. After working several years as a children's book illustrator for the State, Bulatov's disillusionment with the creative and political restrictions of his position inspired him to begin making unofficial works of art.

This exhibition, October 15-November 26, 1989 at the Renaissance Society of Chicago, the first comprehensive showing of a major contemporary Soviet artist in Chicago, consists of twenty-three large-scale works painted between 1967 and 1988, all executed "unofficially" within th...