Natalya Nesterova - Contemporary Art London Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Exhibited

    The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Natalya Nesterova, April 17 – June 14, 1992;
    New York, Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art, Russian Art of The Ending Millennium, October 1 – November 30, 1999; New York, Museum of the Yeshiva University, Remembrance: Russian Post-Modern Nostalgia, September 10, 2003 – February 2, 2004; Aachen, Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst, Natalya Nesterova: Reflections of Time Past, October 12 – November 25, 2004; St. Petersburg, The State Russian Museum, Natalya Nesterova, March 3 – April 2, 2005

  • Literature

    INTART – International Foundation of Russian and Eastern European Art, ed., Natalya Nesterova: Russian Wanderings, NewYork, 2000, 47 (illustrated); Alexandre Gertsman, ed. Remembrance: Russian Post-Modern Nostalgia, NewYork, 2003; INTART – International Foundation of Russian and Eastern European Art, 2003, p. 141 (illustrated); Alexandre Gertsman, ed. Natalya Nesterova: Reflections of Time Past, Palace Editions, St. Petersburg, 2004, p.138 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    The advent of Perestroika and the transformation of the Soviet Union hailed a new dawn of social and political order, alternative philosophies and individual freedoms. Amidst this world of rapid cultural change, transition and ambiguities emerged a luminary and maverick, Natalya Nesterova, whose works have remained decidedly focalized in imaginative capacity with its reactionary nostalgia of an ideal past; works void of politic and aesthetic rhetoric that provide contemplative sanctuary with their didactic imagery. Her continued reflection upon the fundamentals of intellectual, cultural and metaphysical development across four decades of an historical consciousness of revolution, reform and regeneration with a singularized style and pertinacious disquisition has hallmarked her as one the most distinguished Russian contemporary artists.
    The simplistic representation of her works disarms and dissimulates; an outwardly deceptive invitation into a dichotomous world of identity and consciousness depicted in a melancholic narrative of nostalgia. These works demonstrate the artistic exegesis of life and living history; of symptomatic heteromorphism, isolation and ostracism. Deliberate avoidance of mainstream politicizing separates Nesterova from the realism of the ‘official’ Russian artists and the conceptualism of dissidents. Her style suggests a return to expressionism fused with a primitivist technique blanketed with a surrealistic inflection.
    “In the history of figurative painting and sculpture in Russia, one can trace the emergence of late nineteenth century Symbolism, known for its anthropomorphic ruminations on metaphysical power, and examine how it influenced a reaction in what came to be known as Primitivism. Primitivism?a style that borrowed from Russian folk traditions by utilizing simple forms, exaggerated figures, and bright colors?was contemporary with the new expressionism in Europe, particularly the Die Brucke movement in Dresden, De Blaue Reiter in Munich, and the Fauves in Paris. Two of the leading exponents of this movement, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, joined briefly by Tatlin and Malevich, were looking for a greater freedom of expression through the genre of figurative painting. In viewing the paintings of the contemporary painter Natalya Nesterova, it is enlightening to see her works as having an affinity with one of the important early developments in the burgeoning of the Modernist era. Natalya Nesterova’s paintings are essentially about this fleeting consciousness, this diurnal frustration to hold time still, to keep the romantic interludes from fleeting away.” (Robert C. Morgan, Natalya Nesterova: Reflections of Time Past, Palace Editions, St. Petersburg -New York, 2004, p. 47)

53

People on the Beach

1990
Oil on canvas.
64 1/8 x 64 1/8 in. (162.9 x 162.9 cm).
Signed, titled and dated “Nesterova N 1990 People on the Beach” on the reverse.

Estimate
£30,000 - 40,000 ‡♠

Sold for £66,000

Contemporary Art

22 June 2007, 4pm & 5pm
London