LONDON.- Nearly 60 years after Oleg Prokofiev left the Soviet Union, where the abstract style in which he worked was forbidden by the state, previously unseen music-inspired graphic paintings by the artist are to go on show in London — continuing a remarkable three-generation artistic story that stretches from
Sergei Prokofiev’s 20th-century musical legacy to the contemporary work of his grandson, composer Gabriel Prokofiev.
Oleg Prokofiev, ACME Studios, Hackney Wick, London, 1989
Gabriel Prokofiev, son of Oleg and grandson of Sergei Prokofiev said: “My father wasn’t a musician, instead he used the medium of painting and sculpture to express the musicality that’s flowed through our family. So much of my father’s work was hidden from public view for decades as it was in an abstract style that was forbidden by the Soviet state. As contemporary Russian artists face censorship, bans and cancellation in 2026, displaying my father’s work in London has taken on additional significance. Above all, as a son and an art lover, it’s just wonderful to see his work exhibited again.”
The new exhibition The Path of Form opens at
Arc Space on 10 September 2026. Arc Space is a London cultural space that has become a meeting place for Russians who have left their homeland. It creates an unexpected link between Prokofiev’s experience as a Soviet nonconformist artist and a new generation of Russian migrs building creative lives in London.
Oleg Prokofiev was making abstract art at a time when Soviet authorities demanded Socialist Realism. Unable to openly pursue the artistic language he wanted, he worked outside the official system before leaving the Soviet Union for Britain in 1971.
Now, his son Gabriel Prokofiev is helping to bring that legacy back into public view. A composer, producer and DJ, Gabriel runs Prokofiev Studio in Hackney with his sisters, where Oleg’s archive has become the foundation for a programme connecting visual art, music, performance and contemporary practice.
On 10 September 2026, that story moves into central London with The Path of Form, a solo exhibition at Arc Space bringing together a rare group of previously unseen graphic works by Oleg Prokofiev, alongside sculptures and an English translation of a 1993 essay by German art historian Gottlieb Leinz.
Oleg’s father Sergei Prokofiev, brother Sviatoslav, Oleg and mother Lina.
The exhibition comes at a significant moment for the Prokofiev family archive. Earlier this year, Oleg’s previously lost paintings — works he had believed were gone forever after leaving the Soviet Union — were brought to public attention in London. The Path of Form instead turns to a less familiar part of his practice: the graphic works through which his ideas about musicality, rhythm, structure, movement and space developed, eventually evolving into his trademark ‘rhythmic sculptures’.
On the works being shown for the first time in The Path of Form, Gabriel reflects: “My father grew up in a household where music was incredibly important and his father, Sergei, generally worked from home. I think Oleg was actually very musical, but the imposing figure of his father, was too great an intimidation for him to ever enter music himself. His creative spirit flourished in visual arts, and yet somehow there is still a musical presence in his work.”
The exhibition reveals an artist whose practice extended far beyond drawing, painting and sculpture. His works explore relationships between forms, encouraging the viewer to move around them and experience rhythm as something physical. Presented alongside Leinz’s essay, Oleg’s unique and very ‘rhythmic’ sculptures, alongside the earlier graphics that inspired them, tell the story of Prokofiev’s distinctive approach to form and space.
Oleg Prokofiev was the son of Sergei Prokofiev, one of the defining composers of the 20th century. His own son, Gabriel Prokofiev, is a contemporary internationally performed composer, producer and DJ whose work brings classical music into dialogue with electronic and contemporary culture.
OPUS 576 BLACK SPIKE, Oleg Prokofiev, 1990, Painted Wood, 62 x 44 x 36 cm
Gabriel now runs Prokofiev Studio in Hackney with his sisters, preserving and developing their father’s artistic legacy through exhibitions and interdisciplinary projects.
Oleg Prokofiev’s story has a particular resonance in the context of today’s London. As a young artist in Soviet Russia, he developed an abstract visual language outside the officially sanctioned aesthetic. For more than a decade, he kept aspects of his artistic practice private.
OPUS 545, Oleg Prokofiev, 1990, Painted Wood, 70 x 60 x 8 cm
His move to Britain in 1971 marked a new chapter. In London, his practice developed across graphic art, sculpture and spatial composition, with increasingly fluid boundaries between two- and three-dimensional form.
The Path of Form now brings this work to Arc Space, connecting the story of an artist whose life crossed political and cultural borders with a contemporary London community shaped by migration, creativity and the exchange of ideas.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events, including a lecture by Irene Kukota on 23 September, exploring Prokofiev’s position within Soviet nonconformist art and the relationship between painting, sculpture and poetry, and a concert for violin and electronics by Gabriel Prokofiev on Thursday 24 September.
The Path of Form is curated by Anzhela Popova and presented by Arc Space in collaboration with Prokofiev Studio.
The Path of Form is on display at Arc Space, London from 11–25 September 2026. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00–19:00.
Oleg Prokofiev (1928–1998) was a Russian British artist, sculptor and poet, and the son of composer Sergei Prokofiev. Born in Paris, he grew up in Moscow and developed his artistic practice outside the official conventions of Soviet Socialist Realism. In the late 1950s he became part of the Moscow nonconformist art scene before moving to Britain in 1971. His practice encompassed painting, drawing, sculpture and poetry, with an enduring interest in rhythm, structure, movement and the relationship between two- and three-dimensional form.
