Henry Khudyakov was born on December 5, 1930 in Chelyabinsk, Russia

In 1974 at the age 44 he immigrated to USA. In New York he lived in East Village. From a well established conceptual poet he turned to a conceptual artist, inspired by the East Village art scene.

He died on January 10, 2019 in Jersey City, USA at the age of 88.

Hundreds of hours go into each compelling work by this remarkable artist, and many works have three lives, recreated at intervals of 7 years in which they underwent a sequence of changes. It's not unusual for his work to be dated 1977, 1981, 1987.

In Russia, Khudyakov was well known as a poet. He says, "I'm no longer a poet because I'm past the age". He quotes the ancients; he thinks that it was probably a Greek, who said that poetry writing is for the young, prose for the middle age and memoirs for the advanced in age. While he was still in Russia, he began to introduce visual elements into his poetry at about the time that he was beginning to use the words on a lesser scale. His poetry and art sprang from the same feelings and laid out on a page, a poem had both literary meaning and plastic appeal.

When he arrived in New York in 1974, Khudyakov had every intention of being an artist. Hovering between two worlds, he had the naive notion that to make a great deal of money, all he had to do was work hard. He was inspired by visual images that he saw in the streets, by campaign buttons, T-shirts, shopping bags and the ubiquitous sign "I Love New York". He began making similar objects for commercial use, but earned no money at it.

Nevertheless, he honed his skills. The street iconography he was so drawn to, like shards of civilization, along with every manner of collectible - studs, chewing gum, band-aids, bows, metallic glitter and more - have recurred in his many works, particularly in his clothing series. The subject matter can consist of tiles, dress shirts, vests, T-shirts, pants, shoes and jackets, such as the intriguing work he calls "The Glorious One". An interest in the supernatural inspired the title "Visionary-Non-Wearables" for a 1982 exhibit. Partially as a result of his cosmic outlook, no canvas can be too bright for him. Along with acrylics and glitter he uses petroleum based fluorescent paint, which glows in the dark.

His work cannot be summed up casually. Although a totally instinctive artist, he is very much in the tradition of the great Russian contemporary of Kazimir Malevich, Pavel Filonov. One of Filonov's principles was to painstakingly cover every square inch of his paintings thus creating a multilayered fluorescent surface. Indeed, not only the Khudyakov's composit works brilliant in coloration, but the complex surfaces are embossed and variegated to the state perfected by the early medivalists and known as the phenomenon of "horror vacuui", fear of an untreated space.

 - Eleanor Flomenhaft  1990  Curator & Executive Director Fine Arts Museum Long Island, Hempstead NY

Selected exhibits:

Smithonian Libraries, Washington DC S.M.S portfolios by William Copley 1968 in Volume 3 Henry is using a pseudo name AFTOGRAF

Contemporary Russian Art Center Of America 1982 VISIONARY NONWEARABLES solo exhibit. Curated by Margarita Tupitsina, edited by Norton Dodge

MOMA New York 1986 RUSSIAN SAMIZDAT ART VARIOUS ARTISTS WITH RIMMA GERLOVINA, VALERY GERLOVIN, HENRY KHUDYAKOV, VAGRICH BAKHCHANYAN

Eduard Nahamkin Fine Arts Gallery 1990 ART OF BUST solo exhibit

Fine Arts Museum of Long Island 1989 I LOVE NY solo exhibit. Curated by Eleanor Flomenhaft

Tabakman Museum Of Contemporary Russian Art 1996 A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION solo exhibit. Curated by Henry Khudyakov

Black & White Gallery 2015 FINAL BRAIN STORM solo exhibit. Curated by Tatyana Okshteyn and Sasha Okshteyn

Center Pompidou KOLLEKTSIA! 2017. Part of the permanent collection of the museum.

MMOMA Moscow 2019 JUMBO LOVE solo exhibit. Curated by Vitaly Patsyukov

Poet of compressed form.

Henry Khudyakov's poetry provides an unusually clear example of the arrival of a radical new technique for laying out verse on the page and subsequently of an equally radical way of reciting it, based on a new layout.

- Jerald Janacek, Professor Emeritus Russian and Eastern Studies, University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Tabakman Museum of Russian Contemporary Art. Hudson NY 1996