MASTERPIECES

YAKOVLEV Vladimir Igorevich (1934–1998) White flower. 1960s. Gouache on paper. 30 × 40

Vladimir Yakovlev is not the most expensive artist of the 1960s. There are much more expensive ones. But he is a phenomenon. “An alien in human form”, as his friend, the artist Valentin Vorobyov, said. What happened to him was a triumph of a higher destiny. Nothing had foretold it. His eyes had been hurting since childhood. He never graduated from high school. Employment as a retoucher in the publishing house «Art». But then came the Thaw. 1957. The festival. Visiting exhibitions with Vasiliy Sitnikov. And a sudden emotional breakthrough: “I want to be an artist!” It did not take a lot of lessons. Basic skills were given by Sitnikov. And then there was no need to teach Yakovlev to draw. Everything came from within. A year would pass, and a rumor would spread around Moscow about the unusual artist. Quiet and powerful at the same time. Friends would organize apartment exhibitions, cut glass, mats, paste up with duct tape. Drawings would begin to circulate in private collections. The flowers would become identifying marks of “friend or foe” in the apartments of the Moscow intelligentsia. And Yakovlev... At the end of the 1950s, he still lived in a communal apartment in a hut on Tikhvinskaya Street. His drawings were often used to light the stove. It was only later that the family moved to Leninsky Prospekt. But all the same. It was impossible to paint in oil — the smell interfered. So, painting was at friends, at other people's workshops. And at home — only gouaches.

Mikhail Grobman once said that Yakovlev's drawings are not wall decorations, but an interlocutor and family member. This is very accurate. His flowers are not parts of still lifes, but characters. The nature of their energy is a complex fusion of loneliness and defenselessness. But the output is incredibly touching emotions.

And in front of us is one of Yakovlev's best flowers. This has been noted by all knowledgeable collectors who have seen this gouache in person. Note that the flower is not signed. For Yakovlev in the 1960s, this was quite normal. The artist did not like to write and got nervous when he was asked to put his signature. He used to run away and hide. He said he could not remember whether his surname was spelled with “o” or “a”. A legend has survived that at first he redrawn his signatures from a sample piece of paper. The lack of a signature on a 1960s work is absolutely authentic.

Provenance — the collection of George Costakis. According to the expert opinion of Valery Silaev, the “White flower” is a monument of Moscow unofficial art of the 1950s–1960s and has museum value.

1960s and 1970s UNOFFICIAL ART

KUPER Yuri Leonidovich (1940) Sofa. Foam cardboard, author's technique. 133 × 142

Before us is the melancholic realism of the artist and poet Yuri Kuper. This is not an old sofa canapé. This is a hymn to the nobility of old things, frozen in timelessness. As the artist said, “All objects become noble from years of human touch, they don't even need to be waxed!”

Today we know and appreciate Kuper as a subject, poetic, sfumato artist. This was not always the case. He left the USSR in 1972, when the Soviet Union was in a period of fascination with post-surrealism. Kuper shared it, too. But one day the photographer John Stewart saw his works and said: “Listen, you are a subtle artist, but you are doing some nonsense. Why don't you just paint reality? Those objects that surround you”. Kuper was struck like lightning. He started painting his workshop, tools, brushes, furnishings. There was such a twist. And he hasn't changed since. Kuper didn't experiment and flounder in trendy directions. His element is the world of Leonardo, Fra Angelico, Titian. Today he remains one of the rare successful contemporary artists working with the tools of the classical school.

SITNIKOV Alexander Grigorievich (1945) The rooster sang. 1991. Oil on canvas, assemblage. 92 × 97

Alexander Sitnikov is a Moscow artist of the seventies. A representative of naive-ironic lyricism, as he himself calls his direction. His favorite subjects include constructions based on mythology, legends, historical allusions. With a dive into the subconscious. The artist loves complex interpretations. And here is an example. The painting is called “The rooster sang”. A girl and a rooster. What is it? A pastoral scene? The sounds of the countryside? Or perhaps an allusion to the ancient story of “Leda and the Swan” — when Zeus, in the form of a bird, comes to the wife of the Spartan king? It's not that simple.

The work is complex, multi-piece. Painting with elements of collage is performed at the highest technical level, which is always peculiar to Sitnikov. 1991 — the heyday of creativity. Three years ago, in 1988, his paintings were sold at the first and only Sotheby's in Moscow. But the price peaked in 2007–2008, when at international auctions, his paintings were sold for 50–60 thousand dollars. Today Sitnikov's paintings are represented in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and many regional museums, and the Zimmerli Museum in the United States.

VULOKH Igor Alexandrovich (1938–2012) Restoration. 1975. Oil on cardboard. 49 × 69

Igor Vulokh's abstractions of the 1960s and 1970s quite often rely on a figurative basis. For example, behind an abstract landscape, as a rule, you can see the real landscape, and so on. But this piece stands out even more strongly. It is almost entirely figurative. You can see the ruins of some historic building. Stones, slabs. And the title is also quite explaining — “Restoration”.

Vulokh is a 1960s artist from the ranks of unofficial art. An aesthetic nonconformist. He studied at the VGIK until he was expelled for professional misconduct in 1961 as punishment for an uncoordinated exhibition with the authorities. Vulokh was supposed to star in his friend Vasily Shukshin's film about Razin, “I've come to give you the will”. The film was closed in 1974, the same year Shukshin died. Today Vulokh's works are in the collections of the country's major museums and important private collections, including those of the Semenikhins, Alshibaya, Kurtzer, and others.

GRIGORIEV Alexander Efimovich (1949) Look. Mask. 1980s. Hardboard, gouache on paper. 60 × 40 (each)

A logical diptych — two works of the same size. And both on the kinetic “engine”.

Alexander Grigoriev joined the group “Movement” in 1967. He was then a young employee of the Research Institute of Experimental Architectural Design. Soon he started making his own abstract geometric painting.

In those years, the group “Movement”, led by Lev Nusberg, included Vyacheslav Koleichuk and Francisco Infante. The young, daring artists proclaimed themselves the ideological heirs of Tatlin and Calder. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, their antics terrified the academic mire and the winners of the Stalin prizes. At times Furtseva herself had to intervene. But history took their side. Today kineticists are considered to be a bright and innovative phenomenon in post-war art. And exhibitions of masters of kineticism are held by the best museums in the country. So, Alexander Grigoriev. “Mask” and “Look”. Kinetic diptych. An excellent choice for a collection.

VECHTOMOV Nikolay Evgenievich (1923–2007) System. 1980. Gouache on paper. 54.5 × 65

Nikolay Vechtomov is a member of the Lianozovo group, an associate of Oscar Rabin and Vladimir Nemukhin. His distinctive style has many names: biomorphic surrealism, decorative cosmism, lyrical expressionism, the play of nonnatural structures and forms in space, symbolic abstractionism.

In fact, it is known that his alien landscapes are the result of an earthly and very traumatic experience. They are the memories of the explosions in the war. Over time they were sublimated into artistic images. Into intricate alien structures. And here we have the brightest example of such an alien biomorphic Vechtomov. The author's signature is on the front side. There is also a signature, title and date on the back.