MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. Russian painter, representative of the Soviet Nonconformist Art Vladimir Yankilevsky died on Thursday at the age of 79, chief scientific officer of the Center for Study and Development of the Modern Art Alek Epstein wrote on Facebook.

"Vladimir Yankilevsky - an outstanding artist and one of the pioneers of the Moscow conceptual art - has died today, shy of his 80th birthday in over a month," Epstein wrote.

Vladimir Yankilevsky was born on February 15, 1938, in Moscow. In 1962, his works were displayed at the famous exhibition of abstractionist painters devoted to the 30th anniversary of the Union of Artists at which then-First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev strongly criticized the art of avant-garde artists. In 1990, Yankilevsky left Russia and since then lived in New York and Paris.

The artist’s works are displayed at 35 museums and galleries across the world.