T he November Russian Pictures sale includes something for every collector. The sale will be led by Construction No.95, an extremely rare early oil by Alexander Rodchenko. This work is the star of a single-owner collection of Russian avant-garde works which have never before been offered at auction and includes names such as Nikolai Suetin, Ilya Chashnik and Varvara Stepanova. Also coming to auction for the first time is a very fine single-owner collection of works by the great 19th century landscape painter Ivan Pokhitonov, one of which was in the collection of Ivan Turgenev. Another highlight of the sale will be the Bar-Gera collection of Soviet Non-Conformist art, the most important of its kind.
A singular highlight of the Russian Works of Art sale is a rare icon from the House of Fabergé, which leads a group of interesting and varied Russian objects sourced from around the world. From the private collection of a noble Baltic family which relocated to Germany after the Second World War, the icon is decorated with colourful purple-shaded flourishes which echo in the amorphous amethysts. It is one of the earliest examples of Fabergé’s experimentation with Art Nouveau design and is one of the largest Fabergé icons to ever appear on the market.
