Lot 258
  • 258

Vladimir Kupriyanov

Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Vladimir Kupriyanov
  • Taganskaya Station from the METRO series, 1994, ed. 3 of 5, printed 2007
  • signed in Cyrillic (lower right); signed in Cyrillic and dated 1994 (on the reverse)
  • Color photograph laid down on aluminum
  • one 41 1/2 by 61 in.; the other two 29 1/2 by 41 1/4 in.
  • one 105 by 155 cm; the other two 75 by 105 cm

Exhibited

Vladimir Kupriyanov, Moscow, Moscow House of Photography, 1990
Tabakman Museum of Contemporary Russian Art, New York and Moscow, 1990
Another print from this edition exhibited:
Korea, Kwangju Biennale, Beyond the Borders, 1995
St. Petersburg, Russian State Museum, Pre-History, 1996
Prato, Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Progressive Nostalgia, 2007

Literature

Another print from this edition published:
Kwangju Biennale, Beyond the Borders, 1995
Art Journal, no. 13, Moscow, 1996, pp. 70-73
Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Progressive Nostalgia, 2007

Catalogue Note

The Moscow Metro was one of the most spectacular achievements of the early Stalin era. During the 1930s-1940s, the building of the Moscow Metro was a huge construction project that expressed the Soviet leadership's aspirations to compete with the major industrial and engineering advancements of the West.

Despite its obvious geographic specificity, the Metro was ostensibly planned as a project for the entire Soviet Union, initially involving a team of specialists drawn from many different regions of the country. The Metro was also intended as one of the most beautiful underground transportation systems in the world, and no expense was spared on its architecture and decoration. The distinct styles of the four principal lines and the forty stations constructed between 1932 and 1954 reflect the Soviet Union's political and ideological course during that period.

The Taganskaya station was designed by K. S. Ryzhkov and A. A. Medvedev and opened on January 1, 1950. It is decorated with fourteen large triangular majolica panels, which include cameo portraits of heroes of the Red Army as well as intricate floral designs. The decorations are captured in these photo-based works by the Moscow conceptual artist Vladimir Kuprianov, which comment on the Socialist Realist aesthetic of the time that penetrated all spaces of Soviet existence.