ORIGINAL RUSSIAN MODERN / CONTEMPORARY ART FOR SALE

The category covers Russian Avant-Garde art from 1890 to 1970 and Contemporary Russian Art from 1970 through today.

Russian avant-garde art relates to a series of modern art movements that flourished in the Russian Federation, Soviet Union, and Russian Empire (Russian art) starting at the end of the 19^th century. Modernism reached its creative zenith in the 1920’s and gave way to the idealized, state-sponsored Socialist Realist movement of the early 1920’s that sought to depict the realities of everyday life of the working people of post-Revolutionary Russia, Social Realisms fall from official status coincided with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 2018, the Russian Government passed a “radical” new art law that states that Russia “now recognizes contemporary art as art.” Imagine that. Prior to this, valuable contemporary works of art (created less than 50 years ago) were officially recognized as “luxury” items and therefore subject to a 30% VAT / import duty - which had previously hand-cuffed the Russian Contemporary art market. This new law aimed in part at opening up the Russian art market to the world, means that contemporary Russian artists will now have a much easier time getting their work seen in galleries and museums abroad, which in turn means foreign art enthusiasts may soon be getting their hands on a lot more post-Soviet era art.

No survey of modern and contemporary Russian art would be complete without the inclusion of the important Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky, the oft hailed “father” of abstract art.

In his memoirs, Kandinsky recollect how he was thunderstruck by his encounter with a painting (Haystacks at Giverny) by the French impressionist Claude Monet – on exhibition in Moscow in 1895.  He stated: “And then suddenly, for the first time in my life, I found myself looking at a real painting. It seemed to me, that, without a catalogue in my hand, it would have been impossible to recognize what the painting was meant to represent. This irked me, and I kept thinking that no artist has the right to paint in such a manner. But at the same time, and to my surprise and confusion, I discovered that it captivated and troubled me, imprinting itself indelibly on my mind and memory down to its smallest detail. But, on the whole, I could make neither head nor tail of it, and was, therefore, quite incapable of arriving at the conclusions which later appeared so simple.” In that instant, unbeknownst wholly to Kandinsky himself, the fertile seed of Non-objective painting had planted “itself indelibly…” in his mind “…down to its smallest detail.”

Have you ever gazed at a seemingly familiar object - only to fail to fully comprehend what it is you were looking at - until closer examination? If so, you know how Kandinsky felt one evening, (years after viewing Monet’s "Haystacks”) when completely by chance, he entered his dimly lit Berlin studio, where he had trouble recognizing a painting he painted, lying on its side on the easel. He was at once struck by the mysterious works beauty; the formal elements dissolved, leaving only the “impression” of the vivid and unusual colors dominating the oddly familiar composition, standing on their own merit, with a beauty far beyond that of the underlying work. One can only imaging the indelibly imprinted image of Monet’s painting rushing into his consciousness, his arriving - right there and then - at the “conclusions” that were “previously concealed” to him - ones that would forever alter the course of art history - abstract art was born.

In 1909 Kandinsky founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group that included several other Russian artists emigres working in Munich Germany, including Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and German-born artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter. The group banded together in rejection of the conservative art establishment and was the first Secessionist group outside of France to 'seceded' from the prevailing academic art movements - whose principles had become too outdated and strict.

Russian Suprematism, an art movement based geometric forms was founded by Kazimir Malevich, the Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist who had a profound influence on the development of non-objective, (abstract art) in the 20th century.  His watershed work titled Black Square (1915), a black square on white background, was the most “radically abstract” painting to date and was the first time an artist made a painting that “wasn’t of something” – forever drawing an “uncrossable” line between academic and modern art. Malevich pioneered and worked in a number of modernist art styles including Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism,  Futurism, Suprematism, Non-Objective art, Cubo-Futurism and others. Cubo-Futurism, also called Russian Futurism – emerged as an offshoot of European  Futurism and Cubism. The term Suprematism in abstract art is based upon the notion that "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" far exceeds the importance of the visual depiction of known objects.

Movements and Genres including Cubo-Futurism Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum and Neo-primitivism and Rayonnism.

Notable proponents include Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Ekster, Vladimir Tatlin, David Burliuk, Alexander Archipenko, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Naum Gabo and others.