Geometric Steinberg of the valuable Moscow pre-emigration period. 1970s. And one meter museum size. And the plot is a godsend for collectors. This is not the usual compositional “geometry”, but a suprematic concentrate. In the center — the planetary model, and in the left corner — a picture-in-picture. An experimental piece! Rarity!

Weisberg formulated his credo simply: “I study the palette”. And when asked about his place in contemporary art, he answered that “all I have in common with my contemporaries is a wall”. The main thing for him was his own world. Color was his religion. And his temple was a room in a communal apartment on the Arbat, painted all white and turned into a studio. Where only the closest associates were admitted.

The village of the Kiev province — Odessa — Vienna — Paris. A normal route for a talented and moderately ambitious provincial artist. Well, where else to go if not to the cultural capital of Europe? There, where Montmartre, the Salons of the Independent, favorite impressionists and progressive audiences who have seen a lot, and therefore are not inclined to obscurantism. Looking ahead, I will say that a miracle will happen. In a few years, yesterday's shoemaker himself will become a prominent participant in these salons. And his personal exhibition in Paris will be paid for by the famous Baron Rothschild himself.

Before us is not a picture, but the whole object of the master of melancholic realism, Yuri Kuper. The work is a virtuoso embodiment of the technique of sfumato, developed, as is believed, by Leonardo da Vinci. Sfumato is an Italian word for blurriness, nebula. The idea of the technique is to blur the outlines of nature in order to convey the air surrounding it.