Alex Kanevsky

Kanevsky describes himself as a slow painter who must operate quickly to maintain a fresh approach to his work. Generally, he paints directly on birch plywood or stretched linen with various types of oil paint – Guerra, Mussini, Holbein, Rembrandt, Classic (Triangle Coatings) – and uses Liquin as a medium. The merging of figuration and abstraction in his artworks is the result of the process of erasure that Kanevsky employs. This technique of painting, rubbing out, and painting over results in a series of layers through which past iterations and experimentations are visible to the viewer.

In 2012, he acted as a juror for the 71st Annual Juried Exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia.

From 2002-2017, Kanevsky had been an adjunct painting instructor at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1997, Kanevsky won the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, which allowed him to paint constantly for two years. The ability to work on his art without interruption was a hugely positive influence in the artist's life. When his grant money ran out, Kanevsky decided to commit to pursuing a career as a full-time artist. Galleries eventually responded to his work, providing him with the means to rent studio space. Since that time, Kanevsky has exhibited his work throughout the United States, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. He has had over twenty solo exhibitions and has been included in more than fifteen group shows.

Initially, he studied theoretical mathematics at the Vilnius University in Lithuania. However, during the early 1980s, Kanevsky decided to leave Europe and go to the United States. Settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he began painting classes at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts in 1989.

Alex Kanevsky (born 1963) is a painter currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His works combine abstraction and figuration in multilayered portraits that capture movement and the constant flow of time, resisting adherence to a single moment. Kanevsky's work is rooted in the artistic traditions of Eastern Europe, where he grew up, and the United States, where he now lives.

Alex Kanevsky was born in Rostov-na-Donu in Russia in 1963. Although he did not come from an artistic family, Kanevsky's parents owned a large collection of art books that were formative to his early introduction to art. Around age ten, he began producing paintings, drawing inspiration from his art books. Despite his interest in the Impressionists, Kanevsky was almost exclusively exposed to Socialist Realist paintings during his childhood. The artist recalls these works as being “the usual official drivel about workers and peasants engaged in heroic toil, done up in the style of the time, both bombastic and sentimental, heavy on dappled sunlight and Popeye-esque forearms.”