Russian Art & Literature - Bloomsbury Auctions

Lot 187. KALININ, Vyacheslav Vasilievitch (b. 1939).
The Queen of Hearts. Etching (160 x 120 mm). Signed in lower
right margin.
After graduating the notorious Abramtcev College of Art,
Kalinin was influenced by the graphic work of Durer and
Brubel. His friendship with Oskar Rabin, helped to influence
the Nonconformist movement that emerged from the Soviet
Union after the Stalinist repressions following World War II. The
Intelligentsia, or creative class, would wait in line for hours to
attend the underground exhibitions featuring Kalinin and such
contemporaries as Vladimir Nemyhin, Otari Kandaurov, Igor
Kamanev, Dmitry Pavlinsky, Alexsander Kharitonov and Dmitry
Krasnopevtcev.
The heroes of Kalinin's drawings are often curious iconoclasts, very
much like the artist himself. Here we see a provocative Queen of
Hearts in a pose reminiscent of Botticelli's Venus contrasting the
original's modesty.
$3,000 - $5,000
112 Russian Art
Lot 187 Lot 188
Lot 188. SHEMYAKIN, Mikhail (b. 1943).
Color Metamorphosis. 1981. Watercolor with colored pencil and
pastel (350 x 260 mm). Signed and dated upper left.
In 1957 Soviet Russia, Shemyakin, then only 14 years old, was
expelled from Repin’s Institute of Art; not for misbehavior, but for
carrying a copy of Matthias Grunewald’s painting “Crucifixion”
into class. An instructor had reported the boy to the KGB and the
school was forced to remove him and the painting under suspicion
of moral corruption of his classmates. Shemyakin was forced into
a psychiatric clinic, where he spent three years becoming “cured”
of his views. Unfazed by the treatment, the artist continued his
artistic development, forming the Petersburg Art Group, an
experimental, open minded forum, with some fellow employees
at The Hermitage.
In 1964 his group organized an exhibition of their own including
works by Valery Kravchenko, Vladimir Uflyand, Vladimir
Ovchinnikov and Oleg Lyagachev. The show opened on 30th
of March and closed on the 1st of April, the director of The
Hermitage was released of his duties and all participating artists
fired from their posts.
$3,000 - $5,000