Georgy Artemov

The collection of Madame Soskins
Ader-Tajan, 4 May 1993, lot 61
Christie's Paris, Collection Claude et Simon Dray, 8 June 2006, lot 6

1931 was a highly successful year for Artemov, during which he exhibited with the Les Animaliers, the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and L'exposition de l'Art Russe among others. The Bison Hunt however, was the single work he chose to exhibit in the important International Colonial Exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts - a reflection of the significance the artist himself attached to this powerful relief.

Artemov was a key figure in the Parisian Russian community based in the south-western suburb of Clamart where he moved in 1930. The Troubetskoys and the philospher Sergei Bulgakov were regular visitors, as was the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, whom he painted. Artemoff's highly finished sculptures embodied exactly the values of the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, which was founded in 1901 to promote quality craftsmanship, while his streamlined classicism draws on the Art Deco style that originated in Paris in the 1920s.

Yet like many contemporary artists who drew back from the encroaching industrialisation of the age, Artemov was also attracted by primitive art, in particular that of his birthplace near Rostov-on-Don. As his grandaughter Sophie Testa remarks, 'A passionate relationship between Orient and Occident formed the foundation of his life'. His sculpture bears close comparison to the Scythian gold reliefs made in these steppes from 700-300BC, while the image of the Don Cossack was certainly a source for the recurring figure of the roaming warrior-hunter in Artemov's oeuvre (fig.1).

The wooden sculptures of animals he carved between 1924 and 1938 share a remarkable sense of energy and flux. As Testa comments, 'There is almost a photographic element to these sculptures, as if capturing the animal's movement in a single instant'. The overlap of the figures in the present work is a device which conflates the narrative, but also prompts reflection on the shared characteristic of both hunter and prey.