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A masterpiece by the acknowledged master of Kafkaesque romance. The most valuable period. 1975. Large size. The highest degree of elaboration. Absolutely museum level. Looking at this soft, sublime painting, it is difficult to suggest that painting for Sveshnikov in the late 1940s — early 1950s was a way of preserving sanity in the harsh conditions of the camp. The young artist, tormented by hunger and illness, imagined and painted imaginary worlds. In the evenings in the barracks, after hard work, ladies and gentlemen would begin to twirl on sheets of paper. And their gallant pas was watched by the death-girlfriend.

Vyacheslav Kalinin is an artist of the legendary “Lianozovo group” — an informal community of like-minded people who gathered in the barracks of Evgeny Kropivnitsky and his son-in-law Oscar Rabin. Kalinin from the student's bench was excommunicated from the official exhibitions. The commission of the Moscow Union of Artists quickly identified “non-Soviet” mood of his work. However, such a life was destined to many original artists — apartment exhibitions, shows at physics institutes and in cafes.

A one-meter canvas, a main theme and a ringing title: “Steel Soul”. An unquestionable museum level. Neizvestny is one of the main representatives of unofficial post-war art. A legend. “Steel Soul” belongs to the fertile period of Neizvestny's first years in exile, a period in which he was able to reproduce in material many of the ideas that were conceived in his homeland.

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.

Pacifying, contemplative, sybaritic, philosophical Nesterova. The sun is setting. The evening descends. A couple looks out from the veranda at a cozy Mediterranean town, whose houses are scattered along the mountainside. Grapes and chopped walnuts are on the table. Much has been accomplished, and how much good is yet to come.

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.

Calligraphic sign “Kalinin VV” — the signature of Vyacheslav Vasilievich Kalinin (1939) — is a valuable attribute for his paintings, but not a necessary one. It is impossible not to recognize, and even more so to confuse Kalinin with someone. Original, distinctive organic style of the artist has not changed since the early 1960s. Cubist chopped outlines, tracing the movement of figures and turns of faces, dense narrative plot — all this fills his paintings for more than sixty years. Kalinin himself has more than once admitted that all his life he paints his autobiography on canvases.

How do we check artworks before we put them up for auction? How do we interact with experts? How does the study of provenance (history of ownership) take place? Sometimes along the way we meet some unexpected and pleasant discoveries. Watch the reconstructions of such real-life events in the new rubric “Examining Artworks” on the YouTube channel of ArtSale.info.

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.