- 472
Lydia Masterkova
Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 USD
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Description
- Lydia Masterkova
- Composition
- signed in Cyrillic and dated 73. (lower left)
- oil and cardboard collage on canvas
- 43 1/4 by 39 in.
- 109.9 by 99.1 cm
Literature
Norton Dodge, ed., Lydia Masterkova: Striving Upward to the Real, New York: Contemporary Russian Art Center of America, 1983
Alison Hilton, "Icons of the Inner World: The Spiritual Tradition in the New Russian Art," in Alla Rosenfeld and Norton T. Dodge, eds., From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, New York and London: Thames and Hudson and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 1995, pp. 269-271
"Lydia Masterkova," in Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell, Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews after Perestroika, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 84-89
Alison Hilton, "Icons of the Inner World: The Spiritual Tradition in the New Russian Art," in Alla Rosenfeld and Norton T. Dodge, eds., From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, New York and London: Thames and Hudson and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 1995, pp. 269-271
"Lydia Masterkova," in Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell, Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews after Perestroika, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 84-89
Catalogue Note
Lydia Masterkova was among the earliest and most consistent practitioners of abstract art in the nonconformist movement and one of the leading female members of the movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Masterkova joined one of the earliest unofficial groupings, Lianozovo, in the early 1960s, and took part in the infamous "Bulldozer Exhibition" of 1974.
Masterkova's nonobjective work was informed by the legacy of the early-twentieth-century Russian avant-garde. She was introduced to modernist ideas by Mikhail Perutsky, her teacher at the Moscow Secondary Art School, who was a former student of Kazimir Malevich. Also critical to Masterkova's artistic development was her encounter with contemporary Western art at the World Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957. Masterkova's oeuvre progressed from the use of vibrant colors and the incorporation of collage elements such as fabric, cord, and sand, to the adoption of a darker, more reduced palette, along with a gradual concentration on geometric, especially rectangular and circular, forms that often feature numerals (usually zeros and ones or nines). As with her avant-garde predecessors Malevich and Vasilii Kandinsky, who infused their abstract work with spiritual significance, a spiritual component is present throughout Masterkova's oeuvre. As the artist explained, "The essence of a work of art is lofty spirituality."
Masterkova's nonobjective work was informed by the legacy of the early-twentieth-century Russian avant-garde. She was introduced to modernist ideas by Mikhail Perutsky, her teacher at the Moscow Secondary Art School, who was a former student of Kazimir Malevich. Also critical to Masterkova's artistic development was her encounter with contemporary Western art at the World Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957. Masterkova's oeuvre progressed from the use of vibrant colors and the incorporation of collage elements such as fabric, cord, and sand, to the adoption of a darker, more reduced palette, along with a gradual concentration on geometric, especially rectangular and circular, forms that often feature numerals (usually zeros and ones or nines). As with her avant-garde predecessors Malevich and Vasilii Kandinsky, who infused their abstract work with spiritual significance, a spiritual component is present throughout Masterkova's oeuvre. As the artist explained, "The essence of a work of art is lofty spirituality."