Alexander Grigorievich Tyshler

D.Sarabyanov, Alexander Tyshler, k 85-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, Moskva: Sovetsky khudozhnik, 1983, listed

Original canvas. There is a layer of light surface dirt. There is a fleck of paint loss to the top right edge and a very minor surface scratch on the upper edge. Otherwise in overall good condition. UV light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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By the early 1960s, Tyshler had stopped producing work for the theatre and concentrated almost exclusively on painting and sculpture. It was the beginning of an important period in the modern era of Russian art, and for the generation of artists of the 1960s and 1970s Tyshler was their natural centre of gravity, and acted as link to the pre-Soviet avant-garde having studied under Alexandra Exter in Kiev in 1917.  He was an important inspiration for Dvizhenie, the group of Soviet experimental, constructivist and kinetic artists founded by Lev Nusberg in 1962. In the year the present lot was painted, a major restrospective of his work was held at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

 

Tyshler described his art as characterized by 'irony, plasticity, paradox, the grotesque'. He was unabashed in his desire to startle: it was imperative that the viewer should see something new, be shown 'a fresh vision'. 'That doesn't mean that my art isn't connected to anything. On the contrary - I recognise the link of time. Painting should contain the threads which tie centuries together, and that link is tradition'.  ref

 

He was adamant that innovation was distinct from fantasy. 'I depict objects with perfect realism, but their connection with people is fantasy. But taken as a whole, the image ought to be realistic - so a woman with candles on her head personifies her birthday.' By toying with the scale and dislocation of everyday objects, he aimed to poeticize their relationship with humans, though he maintained that, 'I am not presenting anyone with images they have not seen before'. As Sarabyanov notes, man - or more often woman - was always at the centre of his work. His experiments with colour and the human form can be traced back to the early 1920s, and coloured pencil sketches of strangely distorted, barely recognisable human figures, simplified and fused together with architectural forms.

 

The series Flower Shelves consists of only two works, the second painted in 1976. The sense of constrained space which comes across particularly powerfully in the present work is thought to have inspired Dmitry Krasnopevtsev. Sarabyanov remarks on the 'gentle irony' of Tyshler's art. The prevalence of platforms, levels, shelves and very tangible sense of constructed space is intrinsic to his art, but may also refer to his family background: the son of a carpenter, his surname is derived from the German for 'joiner'.