Boris Uan-Zo-li (b. 1938, Moscow) earned his Master's in engineering at the Moscow Power Institute in 1962 and spent his career in the Soviet aerospace industry, the author of 165 patents in power electronics. In 1969 he earned a second Master's, in art, at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute — as an evening student, attending after full days of engineering work. He is Chinese on his mother's side and Jewish on his father's, in a state where both were counted against him, and his own father survived the Soviet labor camps. No law said it, but the rule everyone understood was: do not stand out. The police stopped young men for long hair and for brightly colored clothes. He responded in the only way he knew how — painting portraits at night, with engineering precision and the skills of a professional artist, in screaming, violent colors.