A-YA

A-YA (A-JA), Cyrillic: a-Я — журнал неофициального русского искусства (English: Magazine of Unofficial Russian Art), was an underground Russian art revue. A-YA was illegally prepared in the Soviet Union and then published in Paris from 1979 to 1986.

A-YA

Cover #4
Editors-in-chief	Alexander Sidorov, Igor Shelkovsky
Categories	Art magazine
Frequency	Yearly
Circulation	7,000/3,000
Founded	1979
Final issue	1986
Country	USSR, France
Language	Russian, English

The editors were Alexander Sidorov (under the pseudonym "Alexej Alexejev") in Moscow and Igor Shelkovsky in Paris. A-YA was distributed in the U.S. by Alexander Kosolapov in New York. It consisted of 60 pages in A4 format. There were 3000 copies per edition (the first edition numbered 7000). A-YA was printed in both color and black and white.

An informal magazine, A-YA opened to the world the virtually unknown-to-the-public contemporary Soviet art and current Russian art, which for many years was to dominate the world's leading exhibition venues and auctions. It was from A-YA that people first heard the names Eric Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Dmitry Prigov and many others.

In 2004, the entire run was reprinted as one volume by ArtChronika with a new foreword by Shelkovsky as A-YA - Unofficial Russian Art Review: 1979-1986 (ISBN 9785902647010).