- 481
Boris Sveshnikov
Estimate
30,000 - 35,000 USD
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Description
- Boris Sveshnikov
- The Autumn Park, 1962
- signed with artist's monogram (lower left); also inscribed and titled in Cyrillic and dated 62 (on the reverse)
- oil on linen
- 23 5/8 by 33 1/4 in.
- 60 by 84.5 cm
Provenance
Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist's family)
Contragallery, New Jersey
Literature
Norton Dodge and Alison Hilton, eds., New Art from the Soviet Union: The Known and the Unknown, Washington, D.C., and Mechanicsville, Md.: The Cremona Foundation and Acropolis Books Ltd., 1977, pp. 62, 114
Norton Dodge, ed., Boris Svesnikhov: A Retrospective Exhibition, New Jersey: C.A.S.E Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, 1991
Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell, "Boris Sveshnikov," in Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews after Perestroika, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995
Catalogue Note
In 1946, Boris Sveshnikov, then a freshman at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts, was deported to a hard-labor camp on the false charge of involvement in anti-Soviet activities. From 1947 to 1949, he worked at felling trees and digging foundations for gas and oil rigs and oil pipelines. Later on, he was transferred to a larger labor camp. There, Sveshnikov became a night watchman in a woodworking shop that was adjacent to a small art studio, where he could create art all night long. Sveshnikov's parents, who were allowed to visit him once a year, were able to take his works with them. In total, he served for eight years at the two camps--from the immediate aftermath of World War II to the end of the Stalinist era.
After Sveshnikov was finally freed in 1954, he returned to Moscow and made his living as a book illustrator. In 1957, he was admitted to the Artists' Union as a graphic artist.
Sveshnikov was not able to forget the years spent in the labor camps. The experience was the main source of the drama and tragedy that pervade his work, which often alludes to the inevitability of death and the inescapable loneliness felt by all human beings. The crooked and odd figures that inhabit Sveshnikov's grotesque fantasy have the weary look of travelers, and the whole composition creates a feeling of strangeness and isolation that bears the imprint of traditional Russian Symbolism.
After Sveshnikov was finally freed in 1954, he returned to Moscow and made his living as a book illustrator. In 1957, he was admitted to the Artists' Union as a graphic artist.
Sveshnikov was not able to forget the years spent in the labor camps. The experience was the main source of the drama and tragedy that pervade his work, which often alludes to the inevitability of death and the inescapable loneliness felt by all human beings. The crooked and odd figures that inhabit Sveshnikov's grotesque fantasy have the weary look of travelers, and the whole composition creates a feeling of strangeness and isolation that bears the imprint of traditional Russian Symbolism.