Yankilevsky was the number one nonconformist artist of the Soviet Union in the sixties. Already at the age of 18 he was working as graphic designer and book illustrator. Between 1957 and 1962 he studied at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute under Ely Belyutin. He painted his first abstract painting in 1959. In 1961 he became a member of Gorkom, the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists. In 1993 he moved to New York and in 2003 to Paris where he currently lives. He formed his own philosophy under Belyutin, influenced by the special theory of relativity, the uncertainty principle, in other words, theoretical physics. He started painting his series of triptychs in the sixties, and has not stopped ever since: he painted No. 34. in 2014. The first of the series, entitled Classical, is the basis of the scheme employed in his later works. A person on each side, a man and a woman, with the contact between them depicted in the central piece. His style and sym¬bolism exhibits the influence of surrealism. His compositions address basic questions of life and human relationships. It is not always easy to reveal each pictorial element, just as human relationships are very complex. In this early piece, communica¬tion between the two characters is still vivid, but in later works the figures are often alienated, with nothing to connect them.
