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| Hot and Upcoming: The Rise of Russian Art Virtual exhibition curated by Sonya Bekkerman, Vice President and Head of Russian paintings at Sotheby's New York |
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| Ivan Shishkin, one of Russia's
greatest 19th century painters of classical landscape, believed the landscape
painter the true artist, as his experience of the world was "deeper,
more discerning." At a time when the Russian art market produces record
prices with each season, and the great legacy of Russian artists is internationally
celebrated, the expansive idea of a Russian scape: land, city and sea from
the 19th century to the present is the subject of this exhibition. What
follows is a collection of works by artists who use the visual motif of
landscape as a backdrop or as a primary means of expression inspired and
informed by fundamental aspects of Russian culture. Through realistic, site specific, or abstract demarcations of space, this diverse collection of works from varied artistic traditions offers prismatic windows into nostalgic, metaphorical, spiritual, turbulent, perplexing and heroic visions of nature. Complex landscapes, real and imagined, inhabited or desolate, symbolic and nonsensical carry what Simon Schama termed the "freight of history." Ivan Aivasovsky's Romantic seascape bespeaks a Russian Arcadia, timelessness and serenity conveyed through a luminescent palette. From Robert Falk's reverential view of the Moscow Kremlin, to the regions of Riazan Gubernia and Nizhny Novgorod where Arkhipov's bright 'Peasant Girl with Apples' dwells, the vast multifaceted Russian landscape emerges. Nostalgia and memory percolate through Marc Chagall's beloved Vitebsk, David Burliuk's Russian hamlets, and a Russian village becomes animated in German painter Karl Schmidt-Rotluff's spirited expressionist representation. Russian émigré artist Mark Rothko maps mystery and spirituality through large fluid fields of color, and American artist Robert Rauschenberg's 'Soviet/American Array VII' engenders associations of a now defunct political landscape. Unlike Ivan Shishkin's majestic Russian forests, verdant, lush and boundless, global nuclear destruction and deep-rooted social malaise inform the topography of Longo and Rabine. In the latter, nine liquor bottles litter the cold Russian ground like gruesome corpses in a devastated winter battlefield, a despairing cultural landscape. |
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 Seascape Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky ABA Gallery |
 Kremlin Robert Falk ABA Gallery |
 Russisches Dorf (Russian Village) Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Galerie Brockstedt |
 La vache rouge dans le ciel jaune (Red Cow in the Yellow Sky) Marc Chagall Art011 |
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 Peasant Girl with Apples Abram Efimovich Arkhipov Sloane Gallery of Art |
 Russian Beauty Philip Maliavin ABA Gallery |
 Moonlit Night David Davidovich Cherson Burliuk ABA Gallery |
 Brique Serge Poliakoff Galerie Delorme |
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 Untitled Mark Rothko Gana Art Gallery |
 Untitled Mark Rothko PaceWildenstein |
 Russian Landscape with Nine Bottles Oscar Rabine Mimi Ferzt Gallery |
 Composition with Russian Newspaper, Vodka and Fish Oscar Rabine Sloane Gallery of Art |
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 Self-Portrait with Sailboat Vladimir Igorevich Yakovlev Sloane Gallery of Art |
 Family Portrait Alexander Tyshler International Images, Ltd. |
 Soviet/American Array VII Robert Rauschenberg Galerie Jamileh Weber |
 Russian Bomb/Semipalatinsk Robert Longo Metro Pictures |
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Sonya Bekkerman is Vice President and Head of Russian paintings at Sotheby's New York. She is currently accepting consignments for the Russian sale, set to take place in Sotheby's New York on April 21, 2005. |
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