Monkey on the Fire Print

Roman Manikhin is Berlin based artist with an international name. A bright and memorable style, is intended to convey the kindness and warm vibe, which lifts the mood and transfers to a special atmosphere of joy from gray everyday life. Manikhin’s works reflect the ideal fairy-tale world of the artist where he would like to be forever. Manikhin creates an illusory world where objects from completely different worlds intertwine. They find common interests with the artist - mermaids can communicate with dolphins, a beautiful Dalmatian drives with a girlfriend in a pink convertible, a girl smokes a hookah with a crocodile in the bathroom. This grotesque, together with a great love for the beauty of women, is at the heart of Manikhin’s artistic style. Having been educated in one of the oldest art schools in Moscow, Roman Manikhin began his career with works on illustrations for books. This is reflected in the technique of the artist, who, like in the experience of graphic design, continues to think in bright colors, layering, emphasis on figures, but does it in the classical way – with oil and canvas. Manikhin manages to achieve an incredibly bright contrast of colors and shapes due to the special technique of working with oil paints. Using fauvism’s methods of representation, the artist combines effects of paintings that appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century. Manikhin’s art lengthwise and crosswise is full of sentiments. Tropical reality comes out and represents the vitality of magical paradise. All that is the artist’s dreams to escape to the lost world and to gain privacy with his beloved ones and his paint box. The artist’s paintings are on display at the museum Zuzeum in Riga and in private collections in Russia, Italy, Turkey, Denmark, Sweden and the USA.