Stass Shpanin

Stass Shpanin was born on May 16, 1990, in Baku – capital of Azerbaijan, one of the Soviet Republics.

As a teenager, Shpanin moved to Massachusetts in the United States, where he became interested in the history of the Imperial Russia that was forbidden and distorted in the USSR for nearly all of the 20th century. During his studies at the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, Shpanin created a project titled Trialectics, where he combined different layers of history in united monumental compositions. After graduating in 2012, Shpanin travelled to Russia on a U.S. Fulbright fellowship, where he both continued his visual research of pictorial representations of the past and explored his personal relationship to the history of pre-revolution Russia. His current work is focused on fabricating American history using elements of the folklore Fraktur tradition practiced by European immigrants in the United States.

Shpanin has exhibited his work internationally, including the Smack Mellon Art Gallery, the Jasper Rand Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, the ToBE Gallery, and the Gridchinhall Gallery, among others.