Leonid Purygin was born in a small village close to Moscow in 1951. Leonid Anatolevich Purygin grew up as the son of a toy factory director and became a self-trained painter, representing the 'Art Brut' movement. His color-intensive style was deeply inspired by Russian popular art, impressions of the fantasy toy world of his childhood and Tolstoi's poetry of Buratino.

Purygin's early works were rather limited to regular formats, but over the time they grew larger and turned into altars comprising different parts. Purygin received international recognition in 1988, when some of his works were sold in an auction for Russian avant-garde art at Sotheby's. In the following year he emigrated to New York, where Eduard Nakhamkin became his gallerist and cemented his international reputation. Purygin died in 1995.(cbo)