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Welcome to the October Newsletter!
Добро пожаловать в бюллетень Oктября!
 | Sergei A. Grigoriev, "New Bicycle" 53½'' x 39'', 1955, Oil on Canvas Estimate $4,000- $5,000, Current Bid, $1,750 N. Nero |
October Silent Auction
As our October silent auction choice, we are pleased to present a quite large (53½'' x 39''), famous and much loved Soviet painting, "New Bicycle", by Sergei Alekseevich Grigoriev, who is one of the leading Ukrainian painters of the Soviet period. This painting is a charming piece that celebrates the Russian countryside with an almost universal theme of a young boy with a new bicycle. Viewers of this painting always say how much joyful light is captured by the painter.
Sergei A. Grigoriev was the awarded the title of 'People's Artist of the USSR' in 1974. This award was the most prestigious honor bestowed by the Soviet Union for exceptional artistic achievements. Its recipients include many of the most-acclaimed composers, dancers, singers, film and theatre directors and actors of the time. Collectively, for all of the categories, there were only 1,010 recipients of the award during the life time of the Soviet Union. It signified the greatest accomplishment and highest recognition for Soviet artists.
Sergei A. Grigoriev was best known as a painter of everyday-life genre subjects late 1940's through the 1950's. His works are included in many museums including the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Art and The Tretyakov Gallery Moscow. He taught at the Kharkov Art Institute, the Kiev Art Institute and was head of the creative studios of The USSR Academy of Arts, Kiev. He became a Soviet academician, was awarded Stalin Prizes in 1950, 1955, and most importantly the title of 'People's Artist of the USSR' in 1974.
 | Margarita Kolobova "Church on the Old Cemetery in Novgorod" 13¾'' x 15¾'', 2010, Oil on Canvas, $1,200 |
Margarita Kolobova- New Works!
The gallery recently received several new works from Margarita Kolobova. We are excited to share them with you.
Margarita graduated this past summer from the prestigious Russian Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg, founded by Ivan Shuvalov in 1757. Since graduating, Margarita has been traveling and painting. Many of her new works reflect her experiences in Montenegro, Greece, Finland and of course her home town of St. Petersburg.
Currently, Margarita is working on her third degree from the Art Faculty of Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in Finland. She has also recently spent time studying and painting at the famed artistic community of Academicheskaya Dacha, (Academic Dacha) near Moscow. The village has been the spiritual heart of Russian art since the village was founded in 1884 and home of many of the great Russian artists over the last century and a half.
View More...
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape Pond" 17¾'' x 26½''1970's, Oil on Board, $1,200 |
Victor K. Gaiduk-
New Works!
We are pleased to present over twenty new works by Ukrainian artist Victor Kirillovich Gaiduk, A painter full of passion and color, Gaiduk's manner of painting, with bold heavy strokes, hearty daubs of paint and bright colors, makes his works truly unique. They are among the favorites in the Gallery. Especially, as Gaiduk's works are so affordable, with most works under $1,200,
These are rare works and it is unlikely that we will be able to obtain any more. Don't miss out on this rare chance to add some wonderful works by a great artist and at a great price to your collection.
Valentin Sidorov, My Quiet Country- Russian Museum
A fantastic new exhibition featuring Valentin Sidorov is on now at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
Born in 1928, Sidorov is a full member of the Russian Academy of Arts, Chairman of the Union of Artists of Russia, the People's artist of Ukraine 1980, winner of the State Prize of the USSR in 1984 and a member of the Union of Writers of Russia.
The exhibition features over 90 of his most creative works from 1950 to 2000 including paintings and sketches from the artist's studio and from the collection of the Russian Museum, Institute of Russian Realist Art (Moscow) and private collections. Sidorov is considered the master of the "Spiritualized landscape", with his art often pertaining to nature, its eternal cycle and how it is connected to the people of the Russian countryside.
"Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art"- Tate Modern, London
There has never been a better year to look at the work of Kazimir Malevich, a pioneer of abstract art often seen as the greatest Russian painter of the twentieth century.
An artist as influential as he was radical, Kazimir Malevich, (1879-1935), cast a long shadow over the history of modern art. He lived and worked through one of the most turbulent periods in twentieth century history. Coming of age in Tsarist Russia, Malevich
witnessed the First World War and the
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Kazimir Malevich, "An Englishman in Moscow" 1914
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October Revolution first-hand.
This, his first retrospective in thirty years and the most comprehensive exhibition of his work ever, unites works from collections in Russia, the US and Europe to tell a fascinating story of revolutionary ideals and the power of art itself.
His early experiments as a painter led him towards the invention of suprematism, a bold visual language of abstract geometric shapes and stark colors, epitomized by the Black Square. One of the defining works of Modernism, the painting was revealed to the world after months of secrecy. It was hidden again for almost half a century after its creator's death. This painting sits on a par with Duchamp's 'readymade' as a game-changing moment in twentieth century art and continues to inspire and confound viewers to this day.
Starting from his early paintings of Russian landscapes, agricultural workers and religious scenes, the exhibition follows Malevich's evolution towards abstract painting and his suprematist masterpieces, his temporary abandonment of painting in favor of teaching and writing, and his much-debated return to figurative painting in later life
Bringing together paintings, sculptures, theatre and an unprecedented collection of drawings the exhibition offers a complete view of his career, celebrating some of the most progressive art ever made.
Read More....
Note: The Gallery will close at 6:00 PM Friday October 31st for Halloween. No Gallery Stroll this Month. The monthly silent auction will also end at 6:00.
As a HALLOWEEN TREAT however, we have hung the Gallery full of new works under $1,000, please stop by.
Stephen Justesen, Gallery Director
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October Silent Auction!
Congratulations to both S. Griffin and K Vasquez who placed the winning bids for our two September auction works. Day at the Sea by Y.K. Bogatyrenko sold for $1,000 (estimated at $3,000- $4,000) and "The Lilacs the Spring Rain" by Victor N. Butko, sold at $3,250, estimated at ($6,000- $7,000).
As our October silent auction choice, we are pleased to present a large, famous and much loved Soviet painting, "New Bicycle", by Sergei Alekseevich Grigoriev, who is one of the leading Ukrainian painters of the Soviet period. The painting is a charming piece that celebrates the Russian countryside with an almost universal theme of a young boy with a new bicycle. The current high bid is just $1,750. The next bid is $2,000 followed by minimum bidding increments of $250.
Sergei A. Grigoriev was the awarded the title of 'People's Artist of the USSR' in 1974. This award was the most prestigious honor bestowed by the Soviet Union for exceptional artistic achievements. Its recipients include many of the most-acclaimed composers, dancers, singers, film and theatre directors and actors of the time. In all, for all of the categories, there were only 1,010 recipients of the award during the period of the Soviet Union. It signified the greatest accomplishment and highest recognition for Soviet artists.
Don't miss this rare opportunity to add a great work by a highly acclaimed artist to your collection!
We invite you to participate in this month's auction and thank everyone who placed bids last month. Please note that you may place a maximum bid and the Gallery will bid on your behalf up to your maximum. By placing a maximum bid you will be assured you are not out bid at the last minute. Bids will be taken via telephone, fax, or e-mail until the auction ends at 6:00 pm, Friday October 31st. Follow all the bidding updates on the Gallery's web site.
 | Sergei Alexeyevich Grigoriev, "New Bicycle" 53½'' x 39'', 1955, Oil on Canvas Estimate $4,000- 5,000, Current Bid, $1,750, N. Nero |
Sergei A. Grigoriev was best known as a painter of everyday-life genre subjects late 1940's through the 1950's. His works are included in many museums including the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Art and The Tretyakov Gallery Moscow. He taught at the Kharkov Art Institute 1933-34; at the Kiev Art Institute from 1934; was head of creative studios of The USSR Academy of Arts, Kiev, from 1962. He became a Soviet academician 1953/54, was awarded Stalin Prizes in 1950, 195, and most importantly the title of 'People's Artist of the USSR' 1974. Sergei A. Grigoriev. People's Artist of the Soviet Union and member of the USSR Academy of Arts, played a major role in the formation of the Soviet Ukraine's school of art as an outstanding painter and teacher.
Sergei Alekseevich Grigoriev, (1910- 1988)
Sergei Grigoriev was born in Lugansk, Ukraine in 1910. He studied at the Zaporozhe Arts and Crafts School from 1923-26. After finishing the school, he moved to Moscow to continue his studies at the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, VKHUTEMAS,1926-27. Later he attended the Kiev Art Institute 1928-32. Upon graduation from the institute, he moved to Kharkov where he took up work as a poster painter and book illustrator with the Mistetstvo Publishing house.
In 1933, Grigoriev was asked to teach at the Kharkov Art Institute, first as an assistant in the drawing workshop of Vasili Kasiyan, later in the painting workshop of Professor Krichevsky.
In 1934 when Kiev became the capital of the Ukrainian Republic, Grigoriev accepted a teaching position at the Kiev Art Institute.
In the early 1930s, Grigoriev became greatly involved with plein-air painting. In addition to many landscapes of the Dnieper region, he was also doing nudes. Beginning in the late 1930s, he gradually emerged as a lyrical painter. In his portraits, genres pictures and landscapes, he created images filled with humaneness and harmony with the surrounding world.
He began exhibiting in 1932. Important shows include 'Twenty Years of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army', Moscow, 1938; 'Industry of Socialism', Moscow, 1939; 'All Union Art Exhibition', Moscow, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1955. From the late 1930s, he gradually emerged as a lyrical painter. In his portraits, genres pictures and landscapes, he created images filled with humaneness and harmony with the surrounding world.
In the winter of 1940, Grigoriev was called up for the military service. At the outbreak of war in 1941, he joined the Communist Party. During this time, he did hardly any painting.
In the late 1940s, he established himself in Soviet painting as a mature master of multi-figural, complex compositions.
In the 1950s Grigoriev concentrated on multi-figural genre compositions built around dramatic or conflictual subjects. He is especially concerned with problems of the education of children and youth, the building of their characters and social outlooks.
In 1951 Grigoriev received the USSR State Prize for his picture Discussion of the Failing Mark. Also in that year he was made People's Artist of the Ukrainian Republic. Three years later, the painter was elected corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Arts, and in 1958 he became full member of the Academy.
Sergei A. Grigoriev. People's Artist of the Soviet Union and member of the USSR Academy of Arts, played a major role in the formation of the Soviet Ukraine's school of art as an outstanding painter and teacher. His works are included in many museums including the Kiev Museum of Ukrainian Art and The Tretyakov Gallery Moscow. His art was inseparably linked with the life of his people and in his faith in the tremendous transformative potential of socialist art.
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Margarita Kolobova- New Works 
 | "Evening (Greece)". 25½'' x 35½'', 2011, Oil on Canvas, $3,200 |
 | "Snappy Day (Nikolskiy Cathedral, St.Petersburg)", 9¾'' x 15¾'', 2010, Oil on Board, $750 |
 | "Kotor Bay (Montenegro)", 15¾'' x 19¾'', 2012, Oil on Canvas, $800 |
 | "Morning in Agia-Paraskevy (Greece)", 11¾'' x 15¾'', 2011, Oil on Canvas, $800 |
 | "Winter in Nakhichevan (Nakhichevan-on-Don)", 7¾'' x 15¾'', 2011, Oil on Canvas, $800 |
 | "Evening", 13½'' x 20¾'', 2012, Oil on Canvas, $800 |
 | "Tauride Garden (St.Petersburg)", 19¾'' x 21¾'', 2014, Oil on Canvas, $2,900 |
 | " Night on Fontanka River (St..Petersburg)" 9¾'' x 11¾'', 2010, Oil on Canvas, $600 |
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Victor Kirillovich Gaiduk New Works! 
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Abstract Landscape", 20'' x 28'', 1970"s, Gouache on Cardboard, $990 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape- Pond", 19¾'' x 27½'', 1970"s, Oil on Cardboard, $990 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape- Evening Trees", 15¼'' x 23¼'', 1970's, Gouache on Cardboard, $1,100 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape- Fall Trees", 16¼'' x 20¾'', Gouache on Cardboard, $1,100 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape Trees", 15¼'' x 24'', 1970's, Gouache on Cardboard, $1,100 |
 | Victor K Gaiduk, "Landscape" 19¼'' x 27½'', 1970"s, Gouache on Cardboard, $900 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape, Countryside Lake" 15¾'' x 23½'', 1970's, Oil on Cardboard, $990 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Summer Landscape", 8¾'' x 11'', 1970's, Oil on Cardboard, $890 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape", 14¼'' x 24½'',1970's, Oil on Cardboard, $990 |
 | Victor Gaiduk, "Landscape" 17'' x 24'', (43 x 61 cm) 1970"s, Oil on Cardboard, $900 |
 | Victor Kirillovich Gaiduk, "Landscape", 16¼'' x 23½'', (41 x 60 cm) 1970"s, Oil on Cardboard, $990 |
 | Victor K. Gaiduk, "Landscape" 15¼'' x 24½'', (39 x 62 cm) 1970's, Oil on Cardboard $990 |
Victor Kirillovich Gaiduk, 1926-1992
(Haiduk), Виктор Кириллович Гайдук
Born in Zaporozhye, Ukraine in 1926. He trained at the Zaporozhye association of artists in the studios of the famous Ukrainian artists G. and B. Kolosovsky between 1951 to 1957.
Active in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, Gaiduk began exhibiting in 1953. Gaiduk was a member of the National Union of artists.
Victor Kirillovich Gaiduk is listed in "A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters 1900-1980" by Matthew Cullerne Bown (page 92).
Gaiduik's works are included in major national museums, the Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum, in numerous galleries and private collections in Ukraine, Russia and worldwide.
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Valentin Sidorov, My Quiet Country
The Russian Museum 
This wonderful exhibition highlights the work of one of the most celebrated artists in Russia today, Valentin Mikhailovich Sidorov.
Russia and its picturesque landscapes have been the inspiration behind most of Sidorov's works. Sidorov is an artist with a strongly marked national character. His art is devoted to his homeland, Russia, and deeply connected to the Russian village and the so-called Russian soul.
President of the Russian Union of Artists for many years, and one of the leading members of the post war Moscow school of Art, Sidorov was always passionate about the countryside and has an understanding of the beauty and magnificence of nature in his heart. Sidorov is a Master of the "lyrical landscape",
The exhibition showcases more than seventy works from the Russian Museum, The Institute of Russian Realist Art (Moscow), private collections and the artist's studio,
 | "On the Warm Land", 1962 |
 | "Swing", 1970 |
 | "Silence", 1971 |
 | "Near the Old Sheds". 1975 |
 | "Summer Garden", 1964 |
 | "With Mushrooms", 30¾'' x 34¾'', 1975, Oil on Canvas, $65,000 |
"To convey the feeling of your homeland is far from simple, but how grateful we are to those painters who have such a talent. Valentin Mikhailovich Sidorov is undoubtedly such an artist. There is a deeply felt compassion and empathy for his homeland which affects us subtly from his canvases. Valentine Sidorov has proved, that nature is inexhaustible for the expression of all kinds of new and unexpected visions. His technique is deceptively simple: there is no complex layering of paint, little texture, it all appears discouragingly direct. But in this simplicity lies the secret. These works are simple in execution and concept but strikingly truthful and full of emotion." -Gely Korzhev
 | Sidorov in his studio, Moscow, 2009 |
Valentin Mikhailovich Sidorov, (born 1928, the Tver Province).
Peoples Artist of the USSR, Laureate of State Prizes, member of Presidium of the Russia Academy of Arts, Chairman of the Association of Painters of Russia. In 1948 entered the I.E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture,. Graduated from the Surikov Moscow State Institute of Arts in 1954. From 1960 to 1966 headed the Academic Dacha. Permanent participant of the municipal, regional, All-Russia and All-Union Art Exhibitions as well as the Russian Fine Arts Exhibitions abroad since 1951.
Laureate of the Sholokhov Prize 2000, In 1996 was awarded with the Golden Medal of the Russian Academy of Arts for the works created in 1993-1995 and on year later became the Laureate of the State Prize of Russia for the series of works "My Quiet Motherland".
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"Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art"
Tate Modern London
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Self Portrait, 1908
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One of the major highlights of the UK-Russia Year of Culture, is the major retrospective of Kazimir Malevich at Tate Modern in London. The new show looks at the work of the creator of the infamous Black Square, one of the most radical and significant figures in modern art and father of a new visual language called Suprematism.
The exhibition presents 150 works rarely seen in public. Its curator Iria Candela explains: "This exhibition sheds new light on Malevich's career in its entirety from early experiments to the cataclysmic invention of Suprematism." Following a chronological format, the show allows visitors to see Malevich's journey from religious imagery to abstraction.
In his early paintings, the artist was heavily influenced by folk art and Russian Orthodox icons. Subsequently, the work of the post-impressionists and modern art movements in Paris in the early 20th century also exerted significant influence on Malevich's art. The artist came to know the work of artistic giants such as Monet, Gauguin, Picasso and Matisse, through his visits to the homes of Moscow-based collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morosov.
 | "Black Square", 1915 |
Malevich is known above all for his Black Square (1915), a black square surrounded by a margin of white-the most prominent of the abstract, geometric paintings he called Suprematist, first shown at the now famous "0.10" exhibition in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1915.
The word iconic is so overused in art that it's become almost meaningless, but in the case of the centrepiece of this show it is, for once, justified.
Black Square is among the most revolutionary paintings in history. It declared, for the first time anywhere, that art could be entirely freed from depicting anything other than coloured shapes: no figure, no landscape, no still life, no symbolism - just a black form amid a white one.
Malevich himself saw it as an icon heralding "the beginning of a new culture", which he called suprematism. With Suprematism, Malevich hoped to create "a world in which man experiences totality with nature," though using forms "which have nothing in common with nature." He declared the Black Square to be the "zero of form," claiming that it eclipsed all previous art.
When it was first shown as part of a group of 39 abstract paintings in a dramatic display in Moscow in December 1915, it was placed at the top of the wall - the artist's supreme work presiding over the rest of the pictures. Most importantly, it bridged a corner of the room, just as religious icon paintings would hang in the "holy corner" of Russian Orthodox homes. It was iconoclasm writ large: an act that would be immediately understood by its audience as a shocking replacement of the old order with the new. Malevich was intent on building a myth around this work, and it became a totem for the avant garde; a beacon for thinking the unthinkable for generations of artists.
 | "Shroud of Christ" 1908 |
Black Square is inevitably the fulcrum around which Tate Modern's huge new exhibition pivots. Its origins lay in his designs for a futurist opera in 1913 called Victory Over the Sun, the libretto of which had used fractured sounds with no meaning - a language the artist called "zaum". His set and costumes responded in kind, with angular and jagged forms boldly thrust together.
It took him a while to transfer the spirit of these designs into paintings but by 1915 he'd done it. The original Black Square is too cracked and fragile to travel, so the Tate has borrowed a larger one he produced in 1923, one of several versions he made.
A revolutionary spirit had long driven his work. He was born to Polish parents in Kiev in 1879 and settled in Moscow in 1906. Thus, he came of age as a painter just as the traditional feudal society and oppressive government of Tsarist Russia were under increasing strain from an impoverished workforce and a liberal, educated middle class.
Malevich, like other avant-garde artists, welcomed the revolution, and suprematism soon became the language that promoted its ideals, especially through Malevich's followers, such as El Lissitzky. Malevich himself never made openly political works, though he took up several state positions in art schools.
Artistically, Moscow was just the place for an artist intent on breaking with the old order, as wealthy collectors such as Sergei Shchukin had opened their great collections of French modern art to the public. Always, though, his art remained Russian in spirit - several 1912 works resemble the metallic humanoids of Fernand Léger, but Malevich wasn't interested in man as machine like the Frenchman. In a modern take on a long Russian tradition, he took for his subjects rural workers, such as those in The Scyther and The Woodcutter.
 | "The Woodcutter", 1912 |
 | "The Scyther (Mower)", 1912 |
The exhibition is essentially a drama in three acts: the early years before "Black Square", the epiphany of abstraction, and then Malevich's later years and his attempts to reconcile suprematism with figuration.
 | "Bather", 1911 |
Malevich's Fauve paintings of 1910-1911 remain startling. Bather, perhaps a direct response to Matisse's La Danse, can be taken as an image of Malevich himself. A naked figure, with large red hands and two right feet, also large and red, is about to fling himself into unknown waters; the only visible facial feature is an eye. A picture of a chiropodist is no less exciting-and somehow no less Fauve-despite being painted in grey and the very palest of greens and yellows. Even a black and white lithograph, The Floor Polishers, carries a similar charge. The energy of Malevich's work stems not only from color but also from his remarkable ability to evoke a sense of movement. This dynamism can be sensed in work from all his different periods, whether figurative or abstract.
In his next period, Malevich fused the geometry of Cubism with the energy of Italian Futurism. There are paintings of woodcutters, and of peasant women carrying buckets or gathering sheaves of corn. Once again, as in icons, the eyes are the dominant facial feature. One of the finest is Knife-Grinder (Principle of Glittering). The Futurist technique of multiplying an image to convey movement has seldom been used to better effect. The left foot, operating the pedal that turns the wheel, is in at least five different positions. The fingers are too many to count. This, unfortunately, is one of the works shown at the Stedelijk Museum but not at the Tate Modern; the Tate does, however, offer a related drawing. Even in pencil, it radiates glittering, juddering life.
 | Knife Grinder (Principle of Glittering), 1912-1913 |
In 1919, as Malevich entered his white-on-white period, freeing himself even from color, he wrote, "I have conquered the lining of the colored sky, I have plucked the colors, put them into the bag that was formed, and tied it with a knot. Sail on! The white, free depths, eternity, is before you." Exhilarating though this may be, it marks a temporary victory for Malevich the poet-metaphysician over Malevich the artist. Indeed, for several years in the early 1920s he abandoned painting altogether, concentrating instead on theory, astronomy, his teaching, and his work on the small models he called "architectons" or "planits," his exploratory vision of a future Suprematist style of architecture.
 | Centre Pompidou, Alpha 1923, one of Malevich's best known architectons |
Suprematism initially put an end to any depictions of figures but in the late 1920's, after several years dedicated to teaching, Malevich revised his thoughts and used suprematism to try to reinvent figurative painting. This was a very different Soviet Union to that of the revolution: Stalin's regime despised avant-garde art and promoted realism in its stead. Decreeing that Socialist Realism was to be the only state-approved style of art - only paintings of the hard-working Soviet proletariat and communist heroes were to be permitted.
Like other members of the Russian avant-garde, Malevich met with ever-growing hostility from the Soviet authorities. The State Institute of Artistic Culture, of which he was director, was closed down in 1926 after being publicly labeled "a government-supported monastery." And in late 1930 Malevich spent two months in prison, accused of being a German spy. Had he not died of cancer in 1935, it is likely that he would soon have been re-arrested.
Many feel Malevich was chastened by the new state doctrine and conformed but he managed to reach a kind of compromise -his works from the 1920's and 1930's are far from the mainstream of socialist realism. His portraits of the peasantry were imbued with the graphic style of Suprematism and included covert references to the brutal treatment of the peasant class by the Communist Party. His 1920's and 1930's work is far from the mainstream of socialist realism.
A sign of how non-conformist he was is that Malevich, as a gesture of loyalty to his earlier vision, uses not his name but simply a black square to sign his works.
Malevich managed to reach a kind of compromise -his portraits of the peasantry during the 1920's and 1930's were imbued with the graphic style of Suprematism and included covert references to the brutal treatment of the peasant class by the Communist Party.
 | Head of a Peasant, 1929 |
Malevich's 1929 "Head of a Peasant" is one such work: the blank, impassive face of a Russian peasant stares bleakly into the distance whilst behind him women and children toil in the fields and airplanes soar ominously overhead. The geometric division of his features represents the deconstruction of the Russian soul into mere components, part of a machine for the ruling class to exploit.
By the 1930's Malevich's iconic Suprematist style was gradually fading. The artist returned to a more realistic style of painting in keeping with the new official style of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union. . His later works, portraits of his family and friends are fairly strictly representational, although some hints of his Suprematist style still shine through . Perhaps the most stunning example of his later work is his 1933 Self Portrait, where he depicts himself as a Florentine painter of the Renaissance era. This painting could be interpreted several ways, but the underlying message suggests Malevich's bitter assessment of the Soviet authorities' control over Russia's art: were it not for the mandatory doctrine of Socialist Realism, Soviet artists would match the fantastic heights of the Renaissance masters. The painting could be interpreted as a defiant gesture in the face of defeat: while the portrait is in no way abstract, Malevich still signed it with his signature black square, suggesting that he never truly abandoned his Suprematist ideals.
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Portrait of the Artist's Wife, 1933
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 | Self Portrait, 1933 |
 | "Girl With a Red Pole" 1932-3, combines abstract passages with Renaissance portraiture |
As Malevich's earlier work is remarkable for its energy, so these late realistic portraits are remarkable for their humanity. The delicate grey eyes of the artist's wife see clearly and are clearly seen. Unlike the staring, visionary eyes characteristic of the earlier work, these eyes are alert to the world of our everyday lives. A telling detail can be found in these works - a tiny image of Black Square either alongside or instead of a signature. Malevich clearly felt that it was his greatest achievement, and it later adorned the hearse at his funeral and his gravestone.
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Thomas Kearns McCarthey Gallery
444 Main Street, P.O. Box 1695, Park City, UT 84060
Tel: 435.658.1691 Fax: 435.658.1730
website: www.McCartheyGallery.net
Fall Hours: Monday - Saturday 11 am to 6 pm
Open until 9 pm for Gallery Stroll (the last Friday of every month)
Stephen Justesen Robin Valline Jannett Heckert Daniele Bradley
Gallery Director Art Consultant Sales Consultant Sales Consultant
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