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Labas, Aleksandr (Arkadevich)
(b Smolensk, 19 Feb 1900; d Moscow, 30 Aug 1983). Russian painter. He trained in Moscow under Fyodor Fyodorovsky (1886–1956) at the Stroganov Institute (1912–17), under Pyotr Konchalovsky at Svomas (the State Free Art Studios; 1917–19), and also at Vkhutemas (the Higher State Art-Technical Studios; 1921–4). One of the organizers of the SOCIETY OF EASEL PAINTERS (OST), Labas was among the most original artists in the group. The Constructivism of the 1920s and his early experiments in abstract art (e.g. Colour Composition (Oval), 1920–21; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.) left their stamp on his entire oeuvre, which is informed by a restlessly questing spirit. Labas reacted in a distinctive ‘post-Futurist’ style to modern technology. His free compositional shifts and his painting technique, which lends oils the transparent lightness of watercolour (which he also used), endow his pictures with a sensation of movement (e.g. In an Aeroplane Cockpit, 1928; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). He was a remarkable landscape painter, and the world of technology is always organically interconnected with nature in his work. His portraits are laconic, accurate studies of the inner character of his subject, as in The Artist G. Vogeler (1935; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). His images of revolution (the October series, on which he worked from 1928; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal. and other museums) impress by their dramatic spontaneity. In the 1970s he returned to abstract art, creating variations on his early abstract compositions, as in Colour Composition: Movement (From a Study of 1921) (1977; Moscow, artist’s family’s col.).
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