Maxim Fomenko

Maxim Fomenko is a painter who was born in Pyatigorsk, Russia, in 1981. He studied graphic design and later moved to Germany where he currently lives and works in the city of Nuremberg. It was in Germany and during his master’s studies that he started cultivating his own ironic art style. The thematic focus is on the portrait and the representation of the body, including the emotions that move people. Maxim Fomenko experiences an aesthetic refinement through the old master’s painting technique of layered painting. He has modernized and simplified this technique to suit his needs and uses acrylic paints in bright primary tones (red, blue, yellow) for the first layer of the underpainting. The position and choice of colors must harmonize with the later layers of oil paint. Because the finished underpainting fixed with retouching varnish is followed by the oil colors without prior drawing. They are applied with broadly flowing, abstract brushstrokes and sometimes cause a distorting dissolution of the forms of faces and bodies to grimaces and shapes without individuality – to bloodless memories of the previous pictures.