Oleg Vassiliev - Important Contemporary Russian Art–Property from a Foundation London Wednesday, February 27, 2008 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    New York, Phyllis Kind Gallery, 1995

  • Catalogue Essay

    Among the artists of the unofficial circle, perhaps only Oleg Vassiliev so vividly preserves such a close connection with the school of Russian landscape painting of the 19th century. The artist was not afraid of appearing to resemble his predecessors or contemporaries – the social realists — to be sincere, lyrical, insufficiently radical and avant­garde. His many, always somewhat sentimental, depictions of fields and forests resemble the masterpieces of famous Russian landscape artists who had learned of the colour discoveries of the impressionists, especially those of Cezanne. The depiction of nature for Vassiliev represents not only a love of attachment, a gift of nature itself, to simple and sincere recollections, but it is also the continuation of the quest for genuine artistic reality. The attempt to reproduce what Picasso had called “the first vision” was always important for the artist. “I try to insert into the depiction of a landscape the impressions captured out of the corner of one’s eye while walking through the forest or field to a chosen spot; the memory of the smells, sound, light. A landscape is a window into space.” (Oleg Vassiliev, Windows of Memoryѐ Moscow, pp. 140­141). The supernatural, mystical nature of what is depicted is always felt in Vassiliev’s landscapes, landscapes that are saturated with reality and that depict powerful unmediated impressions drawn with photographic precision.
    Faina Balakhovskaya

23

Necessary Meadow

1974-87
Oil on canvas.
84 x 65 cm. (33 1/8 x 25 5/8 in).
Signed twice, titled and dated ‘O.Vassiliev 1974-­87 NECESSARY MEADOW [in Cyrillic]’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠

Important Contemporary Russian Art–Property from a Foundation

28 Feb 2008, 6pm
London