Rostislav Lebedev

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Moscow, Geometry in Art, 1988
Moscow, Palace of Youth, Dear Art, 1989
Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, Contemporary Artists on Malevich, 1991
St Petersburg, State Russian Museum, The Adventures of the Black Square, 2007

A. Erofeeva, The Return of the Avantgardein: Iskusstvo, no.1, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990, p.5,
V. Misiano, 'The Carnival of Power' in: Contemporanea, vol.III, No. 2, illustrated p.51
Exhibition Catalogue The Adventures of the Black Square, St Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2007
O.V Holmogorova, Sots-Art, Galart Publishers, 1994, p.125, illustrated p.129

The paint surface is dirty and the varnish has discoloured. There are chips and losses to the corners of the striped surrounding frame and spots of staining in places. There is a small area of apparent restoration m.l. and some other surface scratches. Unframed.
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Rostislav Lebedev's Red Square is closely linked with the publication of one issue of A-Ya magazine, dedicated to the reflections of contemporary artists on the art of Kazimir Malevich and, specifically, on his composition Black Square. Lebedev had been asked to write a text, but instead created the work Red Square, in its own way a visual, Sots-Art response to Malevich's square. The black and white hues of Malevich in Lebedev's 'object' refer to the colouring of border posts in the USSR. But the basic colour is red: reminiscent both of the colourful phase of Malevich's Suprematism, symbolised by his 1915 work Red Square, also known as Painterly Realism of a Russian Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions, and of the dominant, absolute role of the colour red in Soviet life. Moreover, the title acquires another geographical connotation when translated into English.

 

Although Lebedev's Red Square was never illustrated in A-Ya, the work became well-known through its exhibition and publication during the Perestroika years. The overwhelming majority of Lebedev's works from this time are held in museum collections, primarily the Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, New Jersey, and only very few are in private hands. Red Square is of particular interest to collectors because it has been hailed by critics as a seminal work of the Sots-Art movement. "So, having become a symbol of the Russian avant-garde, Malevich's square, now placed by Lebedev within a mechanically painted striped frame, loses its cosmogonomical essence and becomes an ordinary road sign" (O.Khologorova in Sots-Art, Galart, 1994, p.125)