My Cross

Anton Litvin

My Cross

Anton Litvin was born on March 24, 1967, in Moscow. He became interested in contemporary art in the mid-1990s and graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Art Problems in Moscow.

He has participated in many international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2005), the Prague Biennale (2003), the Cetinje Biennale in Montenegro (2002), Manifesta in Frankfurt (2002), Art Frankfurt (2002), and Art Prague (2019–2024). Litvin has held more than 20 solo exhibitions in Prague, Kyiv, New York, Venice, Moscow, Budva, and other cities. He has been a member of several art groups, including "Group Without a Name", "Summer," "Escape," and the KLTRS gallery.

He has lived and worked in Prague since 2015.

In “My Cross”, the artist brings together two series: “Cross Necklaces” and “The Way of the Cross”. Both are created in his unique technique. Recently, Litvin has been working with the rubbing technique known as frottage. Everybody tried this technique at school, rubbing a pencil over paper placed on top of a coin. This year marks the 100^th anniversary of frottage in art. The technique was introduced by the Surrealists in 1925. However, for Litvin, merely repeating an established artistic method is not enough, he takes it a step further. As his starting point, he chooses a deeply intimate object, the cross necklace worn by Christians under their clothing. Litvin recreates these crosses through frottage and magnifies the drawigns. In doing so, the sacred becomes public, and the mass-produced metal cross is transformed into a unique, original artwork. The sacred becomes art, and, as such, sacred once again. This metamorphosis is particularly interesting in the Czech Republic, as a representation of the most atheist society in Europe.

The photo illustrations for this article are taken from Anton Litvin's FB page.