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 a magazine 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 magazines
Frequency	Yearly
Circulation	7,000/3,000
Year 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 A-4 format. There were 3000 edition copies (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 forward by Shelkovsky as "A-YA - Unofficial Russian Art Review: 1979-1986" (ISBN 9785902647010).