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Alex Jawdokimov
Born in Smolensk, Russia in 1937, Alexei Jawdokimov has led a remarkable life. He was brought up on a kolhoz (collective farm), but spent many of his childhood years in various concentration camps across Europe. He came to England in 1949 by way of Germany with his mother, who was a World War II refugee. He speaks Russian, German and English and became a naturalised British subject five years after arriving in the country.
He was a student at the Somerset College of Art, Taunton where he trained as an illustrator and designer. In 1956 Alex Jawdokimov spent a brief spell in Canada, learning to fly with the RAF. Before he settled in London in 1958 and formed a Russian Cossack Dance Company (his mother had been a professional dancer in Russia) which toured Britain and where he met Christine, his Swiss born wife. He also began to act after a chance meeting with Ken Russell, the film director, resulted in him playing the role of the poet Yessenin in the TV film Isadora Duncan. Since then he has played many character roles in films and television, specialising in east European types, he can count amongst his credits films including 'Music Lovers', 'The Tamarind Seed' and 'The Eagle Has Landed'.
Despite his love of acting, Alex Jawdokimov's interest was still principally in painting and he exhibited alongside hundreds of other artists every weekend on the Hyde Park Railings in the Bayswater Road. He then worked in an advertising agency, afterwards becoming a freelance artist and illustrator, but he soon tired of the routine and commercial aspect of the work and began to devote more and more of his attention to his own style and methods of painting.
Film locations offered wonderful opportunities for on-the-spot sketching and the recording of various landscapes. As a result, Jawdokimov has painted many different areas of the British Isles and the Continent. He lives in North London with his wife there two boys, Shamyl and Anton, and a house full of cats and Rottweiler dogs.
His paintings have been shown in Sydney, San Francisco, Lausanne and London, and are in private collections throughout the world.
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