Max Trutt is the artist alias of Maxim Trudolubov, a Vienna-based visual artist working in drawing, painting, printmaking, and mixed media.

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Through animal imagery and allegorical forms, his work explores what it means to search for a language that can address conflict without reproducing it. After years as a journalist and editor, he became acutely aware of how language can trigger suspicion and division before it conveys meaning. His artistic practice begins with a decision to suspend immediate commentary, to search for another language, one rooted in the shared world of human and non-human beings.

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In City Upon a Hill, a black-and-white triptych, creatures move along paths laid out by unseen engineers, reflecting on dehumanizing systems shaped in part by a long engagement with Soviet history. Drawn with a palette knife, chance, smudges, and material resistance keep the work open-ended and alive.

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The Anabasis series extends this exploration in color, transforming a leaderless trek into a procession and, ultimately, an imagined alphabet. Using layered monoprint techniques, figures dissolve into signs. The work seeks a pre-verbal mode of communication echoing Otto Neurath's idea that words divide, while images connect.

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Before turning to art, Trudolubov spent two decades as a journalist and editor: on the founding team of Vedomosti; Contributing Opinion Writer at The New York Times; editor of the Ideas section at Meduza. He holds fellowships from Harvard, Yale, and the Robert Bosch Foundation, and is a Senior Advisor at the Kennan Institute, Washington DC.