Dmitrii Ryzhikov was born in Leningrad and spent his childhood years at Kemerovo, a large industrial city of Western Siberia, and Mogilev, a city of Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. He moved to Peterhof in 1984 and still lives here. Dmitri started his education at the middle school of graphic art #7 at the Mark Tumin class (the same Mark Tumin who was the apprentice of Grigory Dlugach, the founder of the Hermitage school of painting). He then studied at the department of restoration works at the Saint-Petersburg lycee of graphic art and restoration from 1991 till 1994. Dmitri graduated from the Saint-Petersburg State University of design and technology in 2004; there he took classes in accordance with the programme of the department of the applied chemistry. After he had completed his diploma he started career of an artist in Saint-Petersburg animation studio and later, in 2006, became a free-lance artist.
We can see that Dmitri’s early works were created under the influence of the great impressionist artists of the distant past such as Cezann, Matisse, Van Gogh. At the same time the artist decided to explore the heritage of both European and Russian masters of avant-garde art (Philonov, Kandinsky, Clee, Buffe, Max Ernst, Otto Dix).
The artist’s unique style emerged after a long period of studying different cultural and artistic movements. The main characteristic feature of his style is the implication of light and color combinations for the contrast with bright-lighted parts and the use of special technique to provide viewers with the effect of recently made work that enforces metaphysical strangeness of the images presented.
The works of masters of fantastic realism art from Vienna, Erick Brauer and Rudolph Hausner, inspired Dmitri to reform his system of visuals and to find his own way in the world of graphic art. That’s why later Dmitri became involved with fantastic themes though he analyzed and used some important artistic principles for the creation of texture effect which firstly had been used by Russian avant-garde art masters. His masterpieces are presented at private galleries in Russia, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg and the USA as well as at the galleries of the Free Modern Russian Art Foundation and the Michael Shemyakin Foundation.
