Press Release September 20, 2012

The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund is pleased to announce the 2012 fellowships in poetry and the visual arts. The fellowship in poetry has been awarded to Alexander Belyakov and the fellowship in the visual arts has been awarded to Andrey Filippov. The fellowships will enable Mr. Belyakov and Mr. Filippov to spend the fall of 2012 in Rome, studying classical and contemporary Italian culture, developing their own projects, and interacting with artists and scholars from other parts of the world. The Brodsky Fund partners with the American Academy in Rome to house the fellows and provide them with a dynamic and nourishing intellectual community.

Alexander Belyakov was born in 1962 and graduated from Yaroslavl University Department of Mathematics in 1984. Belyakov worked as a software engineer, journalist, editor and as a head of the regional administration press office. He began publishing poems in 1988 and his first collection, Comfortlessness Ark, appeared in 1992. Belyakov is now the author of five poetry collections and numerous publications in major literary magazines in Russia, including Znamya, Druzhba narodov, Vozdukh, and others. Belyakov also translates poetry from English and his own poems have been translated into other languages, including Italian.

Andrey Filippov was born in 1959 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk, Russia, and graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School. He helped establish Russian conceptual art in the 1980s and 90s and, in 1987, became a member of Club of Avantgardists. In 2009, together with Yuri Albert and Victor Skersis, he founded the art group Сupid. He has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums in Moscow, including the Stella Art Gallery, E.K. ArtBureau, Proekt Fabrika, and the Multimedia Art Museum. He has also had solo exhibitions in Germany and Greece. His work has been featured in group shows in Russia, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, and France. Filippov lives and works in Moscow.

The Joseph Brodsky Fellowships are supported by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, a private charity launched in 2004 by the businessman Mikhail Prokhorov. The Foundation’s priority is the support and development of new cultural institutions and initiatives in Russia, as well the promotion of Russian culture in the global intellectual community. Support for the fellowship in visual arts was also provided by the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Established in 1984, the Trust supports cultural and environmental exchanges conducted in partnership with institutions and individuals in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. Additional support comes for generous individual donors in the United States and abroad.

Joseph Brodsky was a Nobel Laureate in Literature and a distinguished poet and essayist in his native Russia, as well as his second home in the West. The Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund provides Russian artists and writers with periods of work and study in Italy. The Fund had its origins in 1995, when Joseph Brodsky conferred with the mayor of Rome about creating a ""Russian Academy in Rome,"" where Russian artists and writers could revive the once vibrant Russian tradition of artistic pilgrimage to Italy. The Fund was officially established in 1996, soon after Brodsky’s death, by a group of his friends dedicated realizing his vision. In 2000, the Fund began sending poetry fellows to Rome and, in 2002, fellowships for visual artists were added. To date, the Fund has supported fellowships for more than twenty poets and visual artists. The Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund is a nonprofit organization supported by individual donors and independent foundations. We are most grateful to our donors for giving Mr. Brodsky's vision this continuing life.

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