Pasha (Pavel) Mikushev
Komi ethno-futurist painter

born 1962

Son of a traditional Komi hunter and trapper, Pasha Mikushev (officially Pavel) was born in Syktyvkar - the capital of the Republic of Komi - in 1962, being the youngest of the family's seven children. As the Komi tradition provides that the family emblem is inherited by the youngest son, so the first letter of Mikushev’s signature on his paintings - Pasha - is a stylisation of the inherited emblem.

Pasha Mikushev graduated from an art college in the Republic of Komi in 1990. He works as a teacher in a grammar school with a specialisation in the fine arts. Mikushev is the head artist of the Komi magazine on the arts ART. Co-designer of the encyclopaedia of Komi mythology with Yuri Lisovski, with whom he shares a studio and appears on exhibitions. Mikushev’s works have been exhibited in his homeland as well as in other Finno-Ugric countries, Estonia included.

The works of Pasha Mikushev belong to the post-Perestroika period of awakening period in Finno-Ugric art. Komi, Mari, Udmurt and Erzya art share the expressive mythological

The abundance of mythological content and the frequent use of old symbols, patterns or signs  based on ethnic traditions is common in to contemporary largely ethno-futurist Komi, Mari, Udmurt and Erzya art. Pasha Mikushev has been inspired by the first Komi alphabet, created by the Russian Orthodox missionary St. Stephen of Perm. But the far-reaching memory of these paintings is accompanied by a very modern spirit.

SURI, 1999