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Belenok is a classic of disaster. Whirlwind. Panic realism. A lonely figure hiding behind a barrier. An anomaly hung in the air behind him. Anxious waiting for a denouement. The tension is growing and... This atmosphere is the main theme in the work of Petr Belenok. An artist of amazing fate. At the beginning of his creative career, he was a rather successful official sculptor in Ukraine. He made busts of Lenin for village councils. No end of work and endless stream of orders. Wealth in exchange for eternal provincialism. And he didn’t want to live like that. He preferred the freedom and independence of unofficial art instead of bureaucratic satiety. Who now remembers the sculptors of endless Lenin busts? But Belenok went down in history as one of the main artists of unofficial art.

NEMUKHIN Vladimir Nikolaevich (1925–2016) Dedication to Bulat Okudzhava. 1997. Wood tinted, metal. Underneath the pedestal are the author's signature, name and date: НВ Dedicated to B. Okudzhava. Vl. Nemukhin. 1997. A version of the sculpture from this series is reproduced on page 313 of the monograph “Vladimir NEMUKHIN. Painting. Graphic arts. Sculpture. Porcelain” (Moscow, 2012. BONFI). About Okudzhava. The father, the party organizer of Uralvagonzavod, was shot in 1937 on charges of attempting to assassinate his friend Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Mother was sent to camps in 1938. In 1942, as he turned 18, he volunteered for the front. They did not take him for a long time, and he begged the military commissar to send him. Mortar. He was wounded near Mozdok. Commissioned. After the war, he studied at the faculty of philology, worked as a teacher. In the 1960s, he began performing in the bard song genre.

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.

— When will prices start to rise again in our painting market? — Is it good to sell paintings for today's money or is it better to keep it? — And how much time do you advise to wait? Any meaningful price forecast is an infernal regression model. Multifactorial and merciless. Nevertheless, some ideas, forecasts, expectations can be formulated at the level of practical experience of sales and own observations. Let's try in the question-answer mode.

Before us is the sculpture “Dedication to Paul Cézanne”, created by the nonconformist artist Vladimir Nemukhin. Why Cézanne? This is a beautiful story. Cézanne is one of the main innovators of the 20th century, the main figure of post-impressionism. And so distinctive that there is even the term “Cezannism”. In particular, our famous “Jack of Diamonds” (part of the Russian avant-garde) — Konchalovsky, Mashkov, Falk — all of them were at a certain stage Cezannists.

Nonconformist Boris Sveshnikov called his masterpiece “Crossing the May River”. May — with a capital letter. We did not find such a geographical name. There is the Far Eastern Maya, a tributary of Aldan. But Sveshnikov, obviously, had in mind something else. Something mythological or metaphorical. In the background we see a bridge over a gorge that two people cross. And probably a family of three is looking at us from the foreground. What kind of transition? What is the bridge? Bridge over fate? The border of two worlds? Or just the end of a difficult spring? In the mythology of different countries, the bridge over the river symbolizes the border between heaven and earth. The world of people and the world of the divine.

Weisberg is an artist who needs to be able to watch correctly. He created his works in a special, very painstaking way. “White on white” is not just white paint on a white background. His paintings use a very complicated technology, based on a complex philosophy of metaphysical-color cognition of the world and a special system of color perception. On some viewers, Weisberg's paintings even have a psychic effect. The solution to the white had mystical significance for Weisberg — it was a symbol of the main secret, a great infinity and great silence.

The sculpture “Don Quixote” is a programmatic work in the works of Nikolai Silis — the artist of the innovative group of sculptors of the sixties “LeSS” (Lemport-Silis-Sidur). Usually Don Quixote is portrayed as a grotesque character — ridiculous, with a weirdo lost in time. And here is a completely different Don Quixote. Don Quixote is happy. Peaceful, sitting in lotus position and admiring a wildflower. A sort of Zen Quixote. Comprehending the meanings. And the mills? What are mills? Perhaps only part of the game, the role and social camouflage.

Sergei Ivanovich Vasilkovsky in a new manner is called a Russian-Ukrainian artist. He was born in the Kharkov province, but studied in St. Petersburg, at the Imperial Academy of Arts with Klodt and Orlovsky. Then he trained for several years in France, even participated in the Paris Salon. But, of course, the most fruitful and inspired his creative years are connected with Ukraine, with Kharkov. The artist became famous thanks to the soulful landscapes of southern nature and his favorite Cossack theme.

“Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov” — exactly so, with full patronymic — this is not just a name, but the name of a long-term art project, in the center of which stood this man-orchestra. Prigov is an avant-garde artist, a key figure in Moscow conceptualism, a poet, artist, sculptor and performance artist. In the summer of 2007, on the day when he had a heart attack, he was supposed to participate in the next performance. His followers from the group “War” were planning to put Prigov in a Soviet closet and take him up the stairs to the 22nd floor of the Moscow State University dormitory during the day to read his poems.