Born in Saratov in 1943 and active in Leningrad until his death, Rukhin is perhaps the best known non-conformist artist for Western audiences, especially other artists working in the 1960s and 1970s. His assemblage paintings in a quasi-Pop/Expressionist mode are akin to works by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, though his abstractions are more like apocalyptic wastelands of contemporary culture than commentaries on consumerism and advertising icons. Like other non-conformist artists, he explored religious subjects - which were forbidden in art during Soviet times - as a form of protest and opposition. Rukhin, with fellow artist Oscar Rabin, organized the Bulldozer Exhibition in 1974. It was a secret exhibit of the non-conformist culture, and was broken up by the police. Evgeny Rukhin died in 1976.