There are too few people in our world who are capable of moving forward without regard to public opinion, aggressive misunderstanding and fierce criticism. And Rauf Mamedov had to have a lot of courage to show his projects 20 years ago. Critics didn't like the fact that the models for Rauf Mamedov's photo pictures were people with Down syndrome and people with schizophrenia. The artist visualized the philosophical theory of Gilles Deleuze, his “schizoanalysis”, where madness can be interpreted as the highest form of liberation and the engine of progress.

One of the main and most expensive Russian nonconformists. His name has been heard even by those with little interest in fine art. After all, stories about Tselkov can be found several times in the prose of Sergei Dovlatov. One of the most famous is in “Solo on Underwood” — about how the artist set prices for his paintings. He did it in a very peculiar way. And all because one day the artist severely underestimated his painting.

Before us is a great rarity. An example of a large, nervous painting by Vladimir Yakovlev. And one of his most important themes is the cat. There is a beautiful legend that Yakovlev once saw from the window of a psychiatric hospital how a cat caught a pigeon. He was shocked, imagining himself in the place of the unfortunate bird. But knowledgeable people say otherwise. The cat in Yakovlev's work was inspired by Picasso's “Cat Catching a Bird”. Dramatic philosophical subject: a metaphor of human destinies, a conversation about the predator and the victim, about the defenselessness of man in the face of circumstances.

The history of this gouache can be traced back to 1969, when it was acquired by the American collector Arthur Odum. In the U.S., this piece participated in the exhibition «Russian Painting of the 1960s, «was published in a catalog in 1990. “The work under study belongs to a rare cycle of Yakovlev's works painted in pointillé. Such pieces from the late 1960s, executed at such a high level, are a great rarity... This is certainly a creative success of Vladimir Yakovlev... It is a monument to Moscow's unofficial art...” These are quotations from Valery Silaev's expertise.

1996 — the golden period of the famous duo Vinogradov-Dubosarsky, when they split the community of connoisseurs. Some considered them deliberately kitsch artists, almost opportunists to please the tastes of merchants. And they were definitely considered art hooligans. Knowledgeable people, on the contrary, noted the thoughtful conceptual irony of Vinogradov and Dubosarsky and predicted the role of the duo as spokesmen for the spirit of all the 1990s. Now, at a distance, it is clear that they were right.