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One of the most famous innovators of the post-war generation was expelled several times from various art institutes. Living in the Soviet Union, Oleg Tselkov regularly had to go to subterfuges to be considered an artist and not a slacker. But for some reason, Evtushenko, Akhmatova, Siqueiros and Guttuso came to this untrustworthy subject to see paintings in his room on Sokol. His father, who worked at a secret plant, was then dragged to the KGB to take responsibility for his son's dubious acquaintances.

Works of the inventor of “panic realism” can be very different in their technical complexity. Some “quick” graphics works are done very succinctly, literally in a single pass. Technical stinginess is also characteristic of many paintings by Petr Belenok. But that is not the case today.

Leonid Talochkin was a collector, chronicler and legend of the underground art, whose name was associated with the very rooting of the term “the other art”. He was among the organizers of the eponymous exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in 1990, and before that he was among the organizers of the famous “Beekeeping” and “House of Culture” exhibitions at VDNKh (1975) and dozens of others. Talochkin is often called the archivist of “the second avant-garde”. An enthusiast in love with free art, he had a talent for being in the right place at the right time.

According to legend, the sudden appearance of the Suprematist cycle by the expressionist Zverev in the late 1950s occurred after he saw works by Olga Rozanova and Lyubov Popova in the apartment of George Costakis. Being greatly impressed by the Russian avant-garde, he created a series of geometric abstractions of his own. It was a very short and vivid experimental period, which began suddenly and ended suddenly. Since the end of the 1950s, Zverev never returned to this subject.

The exemplary Steinberg of the late 1970s. Even before France, before emigration, before the Claude Bernard Gallery. This is the Moscow-Tarusian Steinberg. And this is the high point of his explorations into the depths of suprematist abstraction.

This painting of rare beauty comes from the collection of Piero Savoretti, an Italian entrepreneur and collector. The painting belongs to a particularly valuable inspired period. At the end of the 1970s Sveshnikov's palette becomes more dense and saturated. Connoisseurs note that in some works fantastic phosphorescent effect begins to appear, which will later disappear from his painting.

One of the most beautiful works of the series “Don Quixote” by Anatoly Zverev. And of course, one of the most polysemantic and long-suffering subjects of the “Russian Picasso”. Collectors have heard more than once, that the “knight of the rueful countenance” is the alter ego of Zverev himself. The artist deeply felt and experienced the insecurity described by Cervantes, the ridicule and hostility of pragmatic society to which sincere dreamers are condemned.

What is happening in the Russian art auction market? How are the prices now? Are they buying anything at all? And what are our thoughts on where things are going?

«Moscow Morandi» Vladimir Weisberg is one of the main and most expensive artists of unofficial post-war art. He was a loner. Weisberg used to say that “the only thing I have in common with my contemporaries is a wall”.

Rare in mood Belenok. The inventor of “panic realism” suddenly turned to a warm, optimistic plot, even if not without a slight melancholy. The author's title is “Sheer Joy”. Where did this come from? One might speculate. The year of 1987 was a time of hope and optimism.