Victor Pivovarov - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private collection, London

  • Exhibited

    Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, Steps of Mechanic, 2004; St Petersburg, State Russian Museum, Steps of Mechanic, 2004; Prague, Museum Rudolfinum, Imprese, 2005

  • Catalogue Essay


    The Triptych with a Snake (2000) from the series The Eidoses was first exhibited in 2003 at the House of Art in Brno as part of the exhibit Retrospektiva.   In 2004 the triptych was exhibited at the State Tretyakov Gallery as part of a personal exhibit of Viktor Pivovarov A Mechanic’s Footsteps, then again in the same year in a repeat of the exhibit at the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg.  In 2005 the triptych was exhibited in Prague at the Rudolfinum Gallery as part of the Imprese exhibit.
     
    The left and right parts of the triptych harken back to the neo-Renaissance experience of K. Malevich.  In his later paintings, Malevich depicts figures of peasants with blank faces.  V. Pivovarov continues along these lines of his predecessor, but goes even further.  In the series The Eidoses, he depicts figures liberated entirely from all that is human, from any sort of corporality, from any kind of gender or social marker. The central part of the triptych The Snake was inspired by the painting Rittrato di Simonetta Vespucci by Piero di Cosimo (1500-1510) from the Musee Conde, Chantilly, which depicts the beloved Juilano Medici, whose praises were sung by many contemporaries in verses and paintings, with a snake on her breast. Regarding The Eidoses a person, and obviously we are talking about a person since the figures in The Eidoses do not resemble anything besides people, is presented here not as a physical or psychological body, not as a social or existential organism, but rather as an aesthetically perfect form possessing maximal potency for self-development both in an object-physical and in a spiritual sense.  The form is purged of everything that is secondary, accidental, and is striving for clarity and purity.  This is how, it seems to me, Leonardo, Piero della Francesco, Uchello and in our 20th century above all Dekiriko and Malevich might have formulated their artistic tasks.  This is a special line in the history of art that, leaning on my predecessors, I wanted to continue. (V. Pivovarov)

203

Triptych with a Snake

2000
Oil and enamel on canvas in three parts.
Each: 125 x 95 cm. (49 1/4 x 37 3/8 in).
Signed 'V. Pivovarov' lower right of each panel; dated '2000' lower left of the left and right panels and '2001' of the centre panel.

Estimate
£120,000 - 180,000 

Sold for £145,250

Contemporary Art Day Sale

18 Oct 2008 2pm
London