Vladimir Weisberg

Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery, V.G.Weisberg. Zhivopis', akvarel', risunok, 1994, no.234
St Petersburg, The State Russian Museum; Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery; Frankfurt am Main, Städel et al., Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, 1996-1997
Verona, Palazzo Forti, L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, 7 March - 4 June 2000
Bern, Kunstmuseum Bern, Avantgarde im Untergrund. Russische Nonkonformisten aus der Sammlung Bar-Gera, 3 February - 24 April 2005
Bratislava, The Slovak National Gallery, Nonkonformisti. Druhá ruská avantgarda 1955-1988. Zbierka Bar-Gera, 14 November 2008 - 22 February 2009

Exhibition catalogue V.G.Weisberg. Zhivopis', akvarel', risunok, Moscow: Gendal'f, 1994, no.234 listed
Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, Cologne: Wienand, 1996, p.250 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, Milan: Electa, 2000, p.154 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Avantgarde im Untergrund. Russische Nonkonformisten aus der Sammlung Bar-Gera, Bern: Benteli Verlag, 2005, p.77 illustrated; p.176 listed as Keine Nachrichten
Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisti. Druhá ruská avantgarda 1955-1988. Zbierka Bar-Gera, Bratislava: Slovenská Národná Galéria, 2008, p.97 illustrated; p.168 listed as No News
E.Khlopina, Vliublennii v klassicheskoe iskusstvo. Zhivopis' V.G. Veisberga v traditsii kolorizma, Moscow: SBM-Gallery, 2009, p.202 mentioned in the text

The canvas has been lined. It is rippling in several places, notably along the top and bottom edges.There are frame abrasions along all four edges. There is a layer of surface dirt with spots of dirt in places. Lines of raised craquelure are visible in the top left corner. A length of the old stretcher bearing the artist's inscriptions has been attached to the new stretcher. Inspection under UV light reveals a diagonal line of retouching across the top right corner. Some pigments fluoresce under UV light and there are possible areas of retouching along the edges. Held in a simple wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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In the 1960s Weisberg turned to the task of communicating absolute infinite space in his pictures. His so-called ‘white on white’ paintings played a key role in this, their main feature was the construction of complex colour relations in the full spectrum of his palette, but brought together with nuances, which is not the same as monochrome painting or grisaille.

White Receiver on a White Background is a striking example of the artist’s work from the 1960s, in which the Jack of Diamonds influence characteristic of his 1950s work is developed with the addition of the iconography of Russian and European abstractionism and the search for a new system of harmony in painting. In the artist’s notes the painting is titled Still Life with Receiver On a White Background, which attests to the absence of any conceptual connotations, while in the Bar-Gera collection the work was given the title No News, transferring the emphasis onto the social reading of the work and the role of the artist within society. This is a rare example of one of Weisberg’s paintings changing its title due to its belonging to a collection with political overtones.

Although Weisberg was drawn to the abstractionists during the 1960s he does not move into the language of abstraction, unlike many of his contemporaries, the masters of the so-called ‘second avant-garde’. His whole life he worked from nature, considering plein-airism to be the very conscience of painting (quoted in V.Weisberg. '20 vyskazivannii' Nashe Nasledie. No.55, 2000, pp.152-153). For Weisberg abstraction was largely a formal task. In White Receiver on a White Background Weisberg uses an unusual high viewpoint to emphasise the flatness and geometry of the forms, creating an association with the suprematist compositions of Malevich. The space treads the line between two-dimensionality and the illusion of depth. The sharpness of the lines of the loudspeaker contrasts with the haphazardness of the tangled wire. The deformation of geometry and search for structural logic within chaos were the principal themes in Weisberg’s paintings of the 1960s. This is why he was as interested in Kandinsky’s abstractionism and l’art informel as in suprematism. At this time Weisberg painted similar still lifes, for example Watermelon and Grapes on a Grey Background, 1960, but which differ in their Jack of Diamonds palette. The ‘minimalistic’ colouristic task of painting white on white in the present lot most likely arose under the influence of European post-war abstraction.

We are grateful to Dr Elena Khlopina for providing this catalogue note.