Oleg Vassiliev

Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York
Private Collection

New York, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Oleg Vassiliev: New Paintings, 1993

Oil on original canvas. The surface is a little dirty and there is some minor paint loss to the outer edges. Under UV no retouches are visible. Held in a modern wood frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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While some of Oleg Vassiliev's works are completely abstract and are concerned with space and light, others blend representational motifs with non-objective planar forms. Vassiliev views the canvas as a boundary between the tangible world and the world of memory and feeling; the picture plane connects these two worlds. His work is seen as a melding of the two major traditions in Russian art: nineteenth-century realist painting and the early-twentieth-century avant-garde. The concept of light as illuminating all aspects of existence is the most important aspect of his paintings and is exemplified by the present lots. Vassiliev has described his work as follows: "I wanted to meld together the quotidian, what I saw as an average person experiencing the world, with what I felt as an artist. I wanted to energize the ordinary within an organized, geometric structure."

Between 1947 and 1952 Vassiliev studied at the Moscow Secondary Art School. He continued his studies in the graphic arts department of the Surikov Art Institute in 1952, graduating in 1958. However, it was not an official Soviet art institution but two creative individuals of an older generation—the experimental graphic artist Vladimir Favorsky (1886-1964) and the Russian avant-garde artist Robert Falk (1886-1958)—who had the greatest influence on Vassiliev's work.

In 1967, Vassiliev was admitted to the Artists' Union as an illustrator. He did not show his paintings officially, and only his close friends could see the works in his studio. Vassiliev consciously distanced himself from various artistic groupings and their activities because he believed that joining the social struggle would harm his work. In 1980, an article about Vassiliev appeared in the Paris-based A-Ya journal, the first publication to bring to light nonconformist art in the Soviet Union. Following the publication of the article, Vassiliev was reprimanded by the Artists' Union, whose officials threatened to seize Vassiliev's studio and exclude him from the Union.