Thread by @Reach4ACopsGun

Russian outsider artist Alexander Lobanov (thread 🧵)

Lobanov was known particularly for his detailed self-portraits, noted for their frequent inclusion of imaginary guns, soviet imagery, and for their self-aggrandizing nature.

Born in Mologa in 1924, Lobanov contracted meningitis at five years old and was left deaf and mute. He was a rebellious and aggressive child, his family had him confined to a mental asylum at the age of 23. During years of hospitalization, his violence and aggression remained.

He finally accepted his fate and withdrew into himself. At the age of thirty, he began drawing: with Chinese ink, pencil, color pencils, & later on also felt-tip pens. He never showed his drawings. Once they were finished, he put them in a small suitcase that never left his room.

Lobanov loved to draw Russian revolutionary icons, almost always carrying or surrounded by rifles, machine guns, swords, and other various weapons, many imaginary, designed by Lobanov himself.

He also often depicted scenes of hunting dogs and hunted animals, such as birds and deer in his work, these were often depicted with Lobanov being accompanied by groups of other hunters.

Scenes of battle.

In the 70s, Lobanov became passionate about photographs. For his photographic portraits, he would create his own environment and prop firearms from cardboard paper, but also drawings and ornamental symbols originally used in communist propaganda.

Over the years, Lobanov's drawings and photographs numbered in the several thousands and Dr. Gavrilov helped organize showings of his work and others' works; first to local universities and psychiatrists, and then in French museums and international galleries.

Alexander Lobanov (Алекса́ндр Лоба́нов) died in April of 2003 in an asylum near Yaroslav, he was 78 years old.

The rest of this thread will be some more of his art.