There were many art groups established in Russia in the middle of Gorbachev's Perestrojka. ArtFact Group is one of them. It was organized by Viktor Saganovich and Eugen Kuznetsov back in end of 1980-s. Together they developed the idea of an art group and Viktor Saganovich gave the name for this group - ArtFact.
They called artistic friends and in a couple of months the first exhibition of ArtFact had a place in the culture center of Pinsk city in Belarus. The first exhibition was eclectic because participating artists followed their own style. As a result the exhibition became non-commercial and very creative. There were well known as well as younger artists: Sergey Zhilevich, Nikolay Kozlovsky, Michael Peysahovich, Vladimir Minakov, Naum Sheir, Sergey Koprusov, Sergey Tolkachev, Genady Gurin, Viktor Ushkevich, Izya Shlosberg.
From this date on members of group ArtFact exhibited their artworks every year. This group grew in size. The information about this group became a part of public relation issues.
ArtFact group was established as very democratic system. There was no administration control. Artists could offer any artworks for exhibition, however the criteria for the display of artwork was that it should be special and innovative. People could not find on ArtFact any portraits of government official or political leaders.
Finally members of group ArtFact started to exhibit their artworks outside of country - Germany, Poland, Romania.
The economical situation in the country was poor and many artists left Belarus. Peysahovich moved to Israel, Seir moved to Germany, Minakov and Shlosberg to USA.
But Viktor Saganovich and Sergey Zhilevich continued to exhibit their artworks in Belarus, Germany, Franch, and USA.
After 20 years ArtFact was born second time. They accepted new active members like E. Talamay, A. Liberman, A Shusterman. The group organized pleners, a new exhibition around Belarus.
Today people could see paintings of ArtFact group in Belarus, Germany, French, Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, in many cities, galleries and museums of USA.
