russia – FTN-blog

Posted on 04.07.202325.04.2023 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Komar & Melamid ( 1943 & 1945)

Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid are Moscow-born artists who emigrated to Israel in 1977 and then to New York in 1978. The two artists first collaborated on a joint exhibition entitled Retrospectivism in Moscow in 1967, and from 1972 started signing all their works with both names, regardless of whether they were made collaboratively. They continued to collaborate until the early 2000s, referring to their work as ‘not just an artist, but a movement’. Komar and Melamid are the founders of Sots-art (socialist art), a critical, nonconformist, conceptual form of pop art, based on the appropriation and subversion of socialist realist iconography and street propaganda, creating humorous, often grotesque, posters, paintings and banners. Both artists took part in the notorious ‘Bulldozer Exhibition’ held in a vacant plot in Moscow’s Belyayevo in 1974, which showcased nonconformist art by Moscow avant-garde artists that was swiftly destroyed by the authorities with bulldozers and water cannons.

www.ftn-books.com has some interesting Komar & Melamid publications available.

Posted on 22.05.202115.02.2021 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Alexandra Povorina (1888-1963)

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If ever there is an artist who deserves to be called cosmopolitan, it certainly is Alexandra Povorina.

Alexandra Povorina-Hestermann was born in 1885 in Saint Petersburg. At the urging of the expressionist Marianne von Werefkin, the artist went to Munich in 1907, where she began studying at a private school of painting with Simon Hollósy, a painter with a relatively traditionalist approach to art.

She maintained close contacts with the local artistic bohemia, including the later founders of the group “Der Blaue Reiter”. It was the avant-garde that attracted a woman much more, who while polishing her workshop in the master’s studio, at the same time searched for new challenges and paths.

In 1911, Povorina moved to Paris, the artistic capital of the world.

It took until the early Sixties that she was recognized for being an exceptional artist. The catalogue which was published together with the Tiergarten Berlin exhibition from 1960 is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 29.10.202023.07.2020 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

El Kazovskij (1948-2008)

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Born in Russia, but living most of her life in Hungary, El Kazovskije has hada special role in Hugarian art. The art of Hungary from the second half of last century is mostly known for constructivist art, but El kazovskije had a totally differen t approach to art . Designing costumes and making performances made him a much more complete artist than the artists from his generation.

El Kazovsky was born under the name of Elena Kazovskaya in Leningrad, Russia to Irina Putolova, an art historian, and Yefim Kazovsky, a physicist. He moved to Hungary in 1965, at the age of 15, and graduated in 1977 with a degree in painting from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. El Kazovsky’s masters were György Kádár and Ignác Kokas.

El Kazovsky was open about being transgender – born biologically as a female and self-defining as an androphile man.

His art cannot be broken down into periods; all of his expressive paintings reveal the same mythological world that he created. Several recurring figures appear in many of his paintings, such as the long nosed dog or the ballet dancer figure. Besides paintings, his work includes stage designs, performances and installations.

www.ftn-books.com has a rare studio Galeria catalogue from 1979 on the artist available

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Posted on 23.09.202015.06.2020 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Serge Poliakoff (1906-1969)

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I love his art. It always reminds me of the best dutch abstract artists from the 60’s and i would not be surprised of Willem Hussem was influenced by Poliakoff’s art

Serge Poliakoff was born in Moscow in 1906, the thirteenth of fourteen children. (Some sources claim that he was born in 1900, which in fact fits in better with his later history – 1906 would have him leaving home and earning his living as a musician at the age of 12.) His father, a Kyrgyz, supplied the army with horses that he bred himself and also owned a racing stable. His mother was heavily involved with the church, and its religious icons fascinated him. He enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but fled Russia in 1918. He arrived in Constantinople in 1920, living off the profits from his talent as a guitarist.

He went on to pass through Sofia, Belgrade, Vienna, and Berlin before settling in Paris in 1923, all the while continuing to play in Russian cabarets. In 1929 he enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. His paintings remained purely academic until he discovered, during his stay in London from 1935 to 1937, the abstract art and luminous colours of the Egyptian sarcophagi. It was a little afterwards that he met Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, and Otto Freundlich.

With these influences, Poliakoff quickly came to be considered as one of the most powerful painters of his generation. In 1947, he was trained by Jean Deyrolle in Gordes (Vaucluse region in France) amongst peers such as Gérard Schneider, Giloli, Victor Vasarely, and Jean Dewasne. By the beginning of the 1950s, he was still staying at the Old Dovecote hotel near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which was also home to Louis Nallard and Maria Menton, and continuing to earn a reliable income by playing the balalaika.. A contract enabled him to quickly gain better financial stability.

In 1962 a room was given over to his paintings by the Venice Biennial, and Poliakoff became a French citizen in the same year. His works are now displayed in a large number of museums in Europe and New York. Poliakoff also worked with ceramics at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. He influenced the paintings of Arman.

The following Poliakoff publications are available at www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 24.02.202002.12.2019 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Sergei Lobanov (1887-1943)

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This is one of those artists that stayed out of sight for me because i never had seen his work in a museum before, but after i found a book ( available at www.ftn-books.com) it became clear to me that his implressionist art is not less than the the works by his french and european counterparts.

Sergey Ivanovich Lobanov was one of the significant but little known artists of the first half of the 20th century. His fauvist landscapes participated in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds in 1910 and 1912. Unfortunately, Sergey Lobanov’s works were hardly displayed hereafter but for few exhibitions in the 1920s.
<divSergey Lobanov studied in art studios of F.I. Rerberg (1906) and I.I. Mashkov (1907), at the Moscow School for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1907-1913). As a school student yet, he got interested in the history of fine arts. Sergey Lobanov attended courses on the history of arts at the Moscow Archaeological Institute in 1914.

He became an official of the Museum and Monument Protection Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education in 1918. Sergey Lobanov was seated the custodian of the nationalized collection of S. I. Schukin in 1922. For one and a half decades the artist was the deputy director of the State Museum of New Western Art (later a considerable part of the museum collection was shifted to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and made the basis of the collection of French painting of the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries).

After his short membership in the Artists Association of Revolutionary Russia he was excluded from it as being “alien to ideology of the Association” in 1924 and walked off from any art groups.

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Posted on 10.11.201820.08.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Ben Shahn (1898-1969)

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Ben Shahn is one of the older Modern Painters emerging in the 40’s and 50’s from the American art scene. Jewish background and born in Russia. After his marriage to mrs Goldstein he travelled North Africa and the great museums in Europe and this shows, because from that date the influence of Klee and Picasso can be recognized in his works. Later he developed a style of his own in which color was an important aspect in his paintings.

Shahn mixed different genres of art. His body of art is distinctive for its lack of traditional landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Shahn used both expressive and precise visual languages, which he united through the consistency of his authoritative line. His background in lithography contributed to his devotion to detail Shahn is also noted for his use of unique symbolism, which is often compared to the imagery in Paul Klee’s drawings. While Shahn’s “love for exactitude” is apparent in his graphics, so too is his creativity. In fact, many of his paintings are inventive adaptations of his photography and that is an aspect i did not know before. The Ben Shahn catalogue designed by Willem Sandberg for the Stedelijk Museum and available at www.ftn-books.com shows exactly why i think Shahn is one of the more important painters from last century.

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Posted on 08.02.201712.02.2018 by ftnbooks — 1 Comment

Icônes de l’Art Moderne. La Collection Chtchoukine

And there we were at the Fondation Louis Vuitton for the Chtchoukine collection…..

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Linda, David , Monica and myself were looking forward to visit this exhibition. What could we expect? Great Picasso’s, the best Matisse paintings, iconic Monet’s. and all in one exhibition …to see this must be a fantastic experience. Some of them i had seen before, like the Gauguin’s in the Beyeler and some even 100 times or more ,because these were in the Gemeentemuseum exhibition in 1996″ FROM MONET TO MATISSE”.

The bowl with gold fish by Matisse is such a painting, but it were the lesser known paintings that impressed me most. There was this magnificent small Rousseau in which one could see the early days of industrialization. Airplane and balloon prominently present in the painting. Furthermore there was this Maurice Denis with the subdued pastel colors. Looking like the dejeuner sur l’Herbe but in the Denis way and a beautiful, very impressive Picasso of 3 Nude Women. But the best was at the end . The part where you could see Chtchoukine had a very good eye for the modern, because the Rodtchenko’s and Malevitch’s were the works in which you could see the transition into Modern Art.

Here above are my favorites from this exhibition and of course there are many books to be found on these painters in the inventory of www.ftn-books.com