Mikhail Roginsky was born 1931, Moscow, died 2004, Paris. He studied at the Perutsky Moscow State Art School, which was shut down for “formalism” and turned into the “Memory of 1905” Moscow Art School, from which he graduated in 1951. He traveled around Russia from 1954 to 1960 working as a designer in provincial theaters and returned to Moscow in 1960.

Upon his return to Moscow in 1960 from the provinces, he painted Moscow courtyards and tramways the way he saw them.

In the mid-1960s he began depicting everyday objects in close up: Gasoline stove (‘Primus’), pot, matches, trousers, the squares of Metlakh tiles used in bathrooms and toilets.

His “Red Door” (1965) is a milestone work for Russian art. Constructed by the artist, the door is indistinguishable from an ordinary door in Soviet apartments that was covered in the ordinary red paint. These works were the start of Russian Pop Art.

In the period 1967–1978 he painted still lives in the classic style and small landscapes and bathers (1971–1977) with acrylics on Masonite.

He taught at the Moscow City Art School on Kropotkinskaya Street from 1963 to 1969, and then at the Krupskaya Distance Learning People’s University of the Arts until 1976. This institution accepted students without entrance exams, so there were na?ve artists in the student body. It was also the only art school that permitted criminals in prisons and camps to enroll. Roginsky had many interesting students, including the na?ve artist Pavel Leonov, who later gained fame. In the 1970s, Roginsky together with Orlov and Komar and Melamid organized and participated in a series of apartment exhibitions. He also took part in the exhibit at the Dom Kultury Pavilion at the VDNKh (Economic Achievements Exhibition).

In 1978, Roginsky emigrated to France and settled in Paris.

In the early years (1978–1980) of his Paris period he produced a large series of “shelves,” modernist tables” and “grids” filled with objects, sometimes abstract, sometimes realistic. In 1981–1985, Roginsky moved to Parisian landscapes, then Moscow landscapes done from memory as well as interiors of his Moscow apartment. In 1985, Roginsky returned to Pop Art. He began working with text, creating large canvases with genre scenes painted in oils and with comic book “speech bubbles” for the characters. In the late 1980s he returned to his favorite theme of the 1960s, the depictions of walls and doors, house wares, and reliefs using corrugated cardboard painted with industrial oil-based paints. He worked in this genre until the mid-1994. Roginsky created a series of works on brown paper in 1994, combining captions in Russian with Moscow scenes and landscapes.

Until his death, he painted still lives, portraits and landscapes using greyish shades, radiant tones and simple, often grid-like organization of the composition.

He contributed to exhibitions in Russia (from 1962) and abroad (from 1978), including one-man shows in Paris (1980), Beneth Gallery in Tel Aviv (1982), Galerie Georges Lavrov in Paris (1983), Galerie Studio in Hamburg (1987), Galerie Georges Lavrov in Paris (1988), Predecessors of Russian Pop Art in collaboration with Mikhail Chernyshov and Boris Turetsky at the Central House of the Artist in Moscow (1998), George Soros Centre of Contemporary Art in St Petersburg (1999) and Pedestrian Zone at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (2000) and a major retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (2002).

Roginsky died in Paris in 2004.

Sources include:
http://www.saatchigallery.com/
http://www.rusartnet.com/