Andrei Roiter studied to be an architect in Moscow between 1978−80. Already at the age of 18 he exhibited together with underground artists. From 1984 he worked as a night guard at a kindergarten, and with the collaboration of others, started using its spaces as atelier and unofficial arts centre. In 1985, he founded the artist group Detsky Sad (Kindergarten) with German Vinogradov and Nikolai Filatov. The “squatters” were expelled by the authorities in 1986. Along with other Soviet nonconformist artists, Roiter has been featured at exhibitions abroad since the mid-eighties. Since the early nineties, he has been living in the West, presently in Amsterdam and New York. His latest work is characterised by nomadic lifestyle and the post-Soviet feeling. His paintings from the mid-eighties were inspired by everyday objects – including toys, writing tablets, alphabet books found at the kindergarten. “All these signs can assume a new meaning, everything can become painting, every ordinary theme can be transferred onto the canvas.” He uses colours sparingly in his paintings combining abstract and concrete sings, objects and characters. In Diet he uses only black and shades of grey, similarly to the painting Still Life, made around the same time. While in Still Life, image elements (vase, letters, characters) are dispersed “legibly” across the canvas, in Diet the motifs are concentrated in the centre of the painting, forming a single abstract sign of irregular outline and mysterious meaning.