Do the origins matter? It is an ongoing discussion in shrinking communities like Riga and Latvia. That is why we here tend to appropriate brands like Rothko and even Chagall, although the international fame they obtained seems to stand apart from the conditions they were born into or in which they later evolved as recognized artists. This is very much Pyotr’s case, too. Born in Dushanbe, the capital of then the Tajikistan SSR, he came of age in Riga, the place he was first exposed to the contemporary art scene of the turbulent Perestroika period. Moving to Moscow in the late 90s to become an artist in his own right, in his own words, was driven by this early encounter with both the free spirited and polemical artistry of those Riga years. That’s what draws me to call him “our artist”.

Pyotr is one of the friends whom I often admire in various companies, because they seem to remain grounded in reality and never lose the attention that physical presence demands, yet manage to publish online reports about what is happening on social networks. Pyotr does even more. He never disappears from the shared table at the bar or house parties, from video calls or walks around the outskirts of Riga, and is often even the center of attention, but at the same time, his timeline on social media is filled not with banal photo reports of events, but with reproductions of drawings and paintings created at the very moment of the event. Right next to him in the sketchbooks, on watercolor paper and sometimes even on the whatever surface at hand, are instant interpretations of posts and situations noticed in his friends’ timelines.

Vents Vīnbergs, architecture critic, Riga, November 2025