On 11 September 2026, a new exhibition opened at the JINR Gallery in Dubna – a project featuring works by famous Russian artist Alexander Fedorovich Pankin (1938–2020), entitled “Alexander Pankin: number as event”. This is the first large-scale retrospective since the master’s final lifetime exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2019. Displayed in the Gallery halls are fifty selected works by the author whose creativity developed at the intersection of plastic art and mathematical patterns over several decades.
There is profound historical resonance in the decision to hold the retrospective in Dubna: it was here that Alexander Pankin’s debut 1985 personal exhibition introduced a wide audience to his art. The new display includes painting, graphic art, installations, photos and videos from the Pankin family’s archive as well as the collections of artist Sergey Katran and gallery owners Olga and Sergey Popov.
An architect by training, Pankin adhered to the structural discipline’s principles – precision, modularity, and a systemic approach – in fine art. Starting with his version of abstract expressionism and neofigurative canvases while collaborating with Ely Bielutin’s New Reality studio, the author came to “meta-abstraction” revealing new connections between art and mathematics. The pieces of his mature period are based on irrational and transcendental numbers, numerical sequences manifesting their geometric nature through strict structures.
A turning point in Alexander Pankin’s life was visiting the 1989 personal exhibition of Kazimir Malevich at the Tretyakov Gallery. While studying the works of one of the suprematism founders, the artist discovered numerical relations associated with the Fibonacci series, the golden section, as well as other structural and spatial models that determined the trajectory of his search for decades.
Cognitive computer graphics developed by mathematician Alexander Zenkin played a significant role in shaping Pankin’s style. Its principles formed the basis of the artist’s Number as Art manifesto and his own artistic method, in which numeric structures are considered as spatial and plastic systems, and the picture plane as a potential matrix structure.
In his welcome speech, JINR Director, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Grigory Trubnikov drew attention to the historical resonance of the exhibition and the importance of the author’s work: “Alexander Pankin’s project develops the Art & Science concept introduced in our first exhibition of Francisco Infante. Today, there is a lot of talk about the era of artificial intelligence, which is based on mathematics, algorithms, and numerical sequences. Back in the 1980s, Pankin’s art intuitively anticipated the advancement of these new technologies”. In addition, the Institute’s Director emphasised that the JINR Gallery remains an open platform for the exchange of ideas and dialogue, bringing together science and art.
In the same vein, exhibition curator Nikita Spiridonov noted the conceptual similarity between the work of the Institute’s scientists and the process of making art. “JINR’s main task is searching for the fundamental foundations of matter. Alexander Pankin’s pieces are a similar search for the fundamental foundations of art. This exhibition is designed to be a space for productive dialogue between physicists and lyricists, complementing Dubna’s cultural and scientific landscapes”, Nikita Spiridonov noted.
Alexander Pankin’s widow Natalia Datieva expressed her commendation to the Institute for the careful preservation of his legacy: “Forty-one years ago, we were welcomed by the sincere open-minded people of this land; they were the first to lend a hand to the artist when he could not yet demonstrate his pieces publicly. The 1985 exhibition in Dubna opened doors for my husband. All these decades our family has kept the memory of that event. We are grateful to the Institute for its warm welcome and high professionalism in organizing the exhibition. I hope this art will resonate with you”.
Today, with algorithms and mathematical structures having become part of everyday user language, Alexander Pankin’s artistic legacy is becoming particularly important. The display vividly demonstrates how artistic thought is capable not only of following scientific and technical progress, but also of anticipating it, shaping the fundamental way we see the world around us.
“Alexander Pankin: number as event” will be available until 15 February 2027. Tours can be booked on the JINR Gallery’s official website.
