A man who had seen life, a veteran, a convict, a wanderer. The years had already begun to show. It would seem — sit in the sun and bask. But he didn't. At his old age Pavel Leonov takes up his brush again. He tried before, but stopped — he was afraid of being arrested for unearned income. And then it turns out that his true vocation was art. It happens so that people are born artists.

Andrei Grositsky's works are the hits of our auctions. The paintings of the metaphysician of the subject world are of growing interest to collectors. No wonder. Works of such a high level appear on the market that eyes widen. And here is another indisputable masterpiece. One of Grositsky's favorite subjects. He didn't just call them “Shovel” but “Portrait of a Shovel”. As if we speak not about an instrument but about an animate object covered with scars and wrinkles of labour.

Kalinin is an artist of the Lianozovo group, Nemukhin's neighbor in Priluki. Today he is a living legend of unofficial art, an original and recognizable artist, whose works are hunted by collectors. And in the 1960s, the authorities considered him a parasitic element, trying to get rid of him. Kalinin was expelled from the Abramtsevo school in 1961. His first exhibition at the Kurchatov Institute was closed almost immediately. In 1975, Kalinin was lucky to participate in the exhibition of unofficial artists in the pavilion “Beekeeping” at VDNKh. At the time of the “city committee” of graphic artists on Malaya Gruzinskaya he exhibited as part of the “seven” — a group of artists-innovators, which included Nemukhin, Krasnopevtsev, Vechtomov, Plavinsky, Kharitonov.

Conceptualism with a suprematist face. Igor Makarevich is one of the main figures of Moscow romantic conceptualism. He is a member of the famous art group “Collective Actions”, which was founded by Andrey Monastyrsky in 1976. Igor Makarevich has a special history of relations with Malevich and his philosophy of Suprematism. The conceptualist Makarevich explores the suprematist field in search of the “elixir of painting” — the magical component which animates pictorial matter.

The artist and sculptor Ernst Neizvestny is a lump of post-war unofficial art. He is the author of the 75-meter monument “Lotus Flower” in Egypt, “Masks of Sorrow” in Magadan, “Tree of Life” in Moscow and other outstanding works. The man was not only talented, but also uncompromising and amazingly courageous. Ernst Neizvestny's modernist works are very recognizable stylistically and interesting for philosophical deconstruction. His paintings are populated by powerful centaurs, half-robots, symbolizing the mixing of humanity and technical progress. And also distorted face-masks, Prometheus, Icarus and the humanistic “tree of life” are the pinnacle of his philosophical quest.

The play of natureless structures in space. Biomorphic cosmism. Artist 100% recognizable. Bright, expressive, innovative. Whoever sees it for the first time will never guess that these bright cosmic spots are sublimated impressions of explosions, which the artist saw in the war. Today Nikolay Vechtomov is one of the most sought-after artists among collectors, and his works regularly become auction hits.

David Burliuk is the father of Russian futurism, the artist of the Russian avant-garde. At the beginning of the century, they, together with their friend Mayakovsky, slapped the public taste: they walked around with painted faces, with a spoon in their buttonhole, and they shocked the public. There is evidence that it was Burliuk who persuaded the shy Mayakovsky not to hide his poems and concentrate on poetry. Then fate dispersed them. Burliuk emigrated from Russia and settled in America.

Andrey Grositsky was an artist in the orbit of unofficial art. He was called the “poet of things”. For Grositsky, not only aesthetics was important, but also the spirit of the object. The metaphysics of the object world remained his field of research throughout his life. He transformed shovels, meat grinders, rusty latches into semi-abstract portraits of things of stunning beauty and depth. Grositsky was lucky to live to be recognized. Nowadays, he can certainly be called a favorite of collectors.

Artist of the Lianozovo group. Participant of the historical exhibition in the “Beekeeping” pavilion in 1975. A distinctive master, whom colleagues called “a preacher of the good”. The famous collector and enthusiastTalochkin pointed out that Kharitonov's paintings are “a small gem, iridescent in hundreds of colorful and semantic shades”. And his technique resembles “a shimmering mosaic of fine smalt”.

Vyacheslav Kalinin , an artist of the 1960s, created his own very recognizable style, which has been called “carnivalism” — from the word carnival. Very aptly. Kalinin's characters are almost always fun. The regulars in his paintings are broken ladies, drunkards, and cheerful artist friends. His works are very moody, phantasmagoric, with elements of cubist deconstruction. And “A beer bar in Serpukhov” — a model example of the genre. A large, powerful painting. Published. The main theme. A jewel in the collection.