Oleg Vassiliev is one of the most highly respected figures in Russian contemporary art. He was born in Moscow in 1931. He attended the Moscow Secondary Art School from 1947 to 1952 and graduated from the Surikov Institute of Art in 1958 with a specialty in graphics. From the time of his graduation until his emigration, Vassiliev worked as a children’s book illustrator in close collaboration with his boyhood friends Eric Bulatov and Ilya Kabakov. In 1990 he immigrated to New York. He lived and worked in St. Paul, Minnesota until his death on January 25, 2013. Vassiliev has been the recipient of numerous artistic awards and grants, including from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1994 & 2002). He also was the first recipient in 1999 of the “Liberty Prize,” which is awarded jointly by the Russian Ministry of Culture and the American University in Moscow.