Svetlana and Alexander Faldin in Warsaw.

Svetlana and Alexander Faldin received the Gold Medal at the 17th Warsaw Poster Biennale in 2000 for their "Against smoking" poster, and came to Warsaw Warsaw in 2002 for their laureate exhibition. They brought with them their daughters Anastasia and Alexandra, who are also graphic designers (with their own poster at the 2002 Biennale exhibition), and I was very happy to meet the Faldin family again and put the finnishing touches to this web exhibition. Svetlana Faldina (b. 1952) is a free-lance designer and graduated from the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute, Graphic Art Department in 1976. Alexander Faldin (b. 1953) is also a free-lance designer and graduated in industrial design in 1975 from the Leningrad Art-Industrial Higher College by Moukhina. Member of Union of Artists in Russia since 1985. Both are members of the Union of Designers in Russia since 1990, have participated in numerous national and international exhibitons, and reaped a long list of awards.

Anastasia and Alexandra Faldina

Alexander's father Vladimir Faldin is a well known painter, and it should be clear that the Faldins are an exceptional artist family which probably works very much in a way like the french group "Nous Travaillons Ensemble", which means that it is sometimes difficult to attribute exactly who did what, who had the ideas and who did the work and who challenged it by criticism and discussion. Some posters, like the "Against smoking" or "Bravo!" are signed by both Svetlana and Alexander, some only by Alexander, and there are also collaborations with friends. Keep that in mind when you read the texts in this web exhibition which refer mostly to Alexander, whom I know best. One of Alexander Faldin's key posters, made in 1987, bears the inscription "Zabvenie proshlogo grozit ego povtoreniem" (To forget history is to risk repeating it), so I included some oral history about a trip to St. Petersburg in 1994, a time that is so unreal in western eyes that it indeed risks to be ignored and forgotten soon. I wouldn't mind to repeat that trip, though.

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