Salavat Fidai

Salavat Fidai (, ) is a Russian sculptor who makes miniature sculptures out of pencil graphite. He currently lives in Ufa, Russia.

Career Fidai began his professional career as a lawyer and spent more than 25 years in this profession. In 2013, during the economic crisis in Russia, he changed occupations to work full-time as an artist. This series was presented at the exhibitions "Metropolitan History" in Moscow and "Eros: The Times and Faces" in St. Petersburg. In 2014, he experimented with expressionism and impressionism through paint. He created a series titled "The Rainy City," which was presented in 2015 at "The Muse Should Work" in St. Petersburg. Later that year, he began sculpting miniature figures out of pencil graphite. The process is challenging due to the fragile nature of graphite and it is common for the miniature sculptures to fracture after spending many hours on a single piece.

Fidai spends between six and twelve hours on average to produce a statuette, while complicated models take between two and three days to create. He uses a craft knife and a stereo microscope for creating the tiny sculptures. At first, he used jumbo pencils with a graphite diameter of 5mm. He now primarily uses lead between 0.5 and 2mm in diameter. His microsculptures have featured characters from movies and cartoons, animals, objects from popular culture, comic book characters, famous works of art, household items, and architectural icons. Boing Boing calls his work "an impressive achievement." Deutsche Welle notes that he has a worldwide fan base on social media.

Exhibits Source: The exhibition Records and Incredible Facts "Titicaca" in Gostiny Dvory, Arkhangelsk, Russia, February 2017 "Game of Thrones: A Pencil Microsculpture Exhibition" in cooperation with HBO Asia. K+ Curatorial Space, Scotts Square, Singapore, May 2017

Sampling of works