Aleksandr Nikolaevich Samokhvalov

The Academy of Arts, Venice

Venice, Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia XIX International Biennale, 1934, no.300

L.Zinger, Aleksandr Samokhvalov, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1982, p.168 and 182, listed, p.58 illustrated
V.Chaikovskaya, Tri lika russkogo iskusstva XX veka, Robert Falk, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Aleksandr Samokhvalov, Moscow: Iskusstvo - XXI vek, 2006, p.130, illustrated

Original canvas, which has been stretched onto a handmade wooden support and is slightly undulated. The canvas has nails along the edges, which have been used to secure it to the stretcher. There are faint stretcher marks along the edges and across the centre of the composition. The edges of the canvas are rough cut and frayed in places, particularly the top right hand edge. the paint surface is dirty with lines of craquelure visible in areas where the paint has been applied thickly. There is a small area of damage on the hand of the lady on the right. There are small area of paint abrasion particularly to the edges. UV light reveals no apparent retouching. Held in a painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame. Proposed Treatment report The canvas has become undulated on its original fixed wooden support. In order to treat the undulations and deformations to the canvas I would suggest removing the steel tacks from the paint surface and treating the canvas and the artist's extension on the low-pressure conservation table. The four tacking margins could then be reinforced with a thin strip-lining and the painting restretched over its support. The steel tacks could then be carefully put back in through the original holes in order to retain the artist's original mounting of the work. The support would also need to be adapted to ensure the sections of wood do not create further impressions to the canvas. The painting would also respond very well to cleaning and the application of a thin matt varnish, and any areas of minor paint loss could also be filled and retouched.
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This exceptional early work by Alexander Samokhvalov comes from his famous series of ten portraits, ‘V commune Leninskii put’ dedicated to the commune in the town of Bezhanitsy, Pskov province, which Samokhvalov visited twice in 1930 and 1931. “The commune entranced me, everything about it – the closely-knit collective, the scope of working life, and the people themselves” (A.Samokhvalov, Kommuna ‘Leninski put’, Moscow, 1970, p.1).  The entire series was exhibited at the Venice biennale to great acclaim and the present work which was chosen for museum acquisition (L.Zinger, Alexander Samokhvalov, p.12). It can be considered a partner work to the other paired portrait in the series, Polevye rabotniki, Komsomoltsy kommuny (fig.1).

This workers’ ‘portrait gallery’, all more or less the same size, ‘is one of the most admirable examples of Russian painting from the 1930s and can be considered alongside the very best peasant paintings by Sergei Gerasimov, Alexander Deineka and Ryazhsky’ (idem p.12).  It seems these canvases were painted with the intention of producing a much larger work:  ‘the monumental work of which I dream now exists in ‘fragments’ on canvas’ (letter from A.Samokhvalov to L.Zinger, October 1966).

The impact of his teacher Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin is clearly felt in Samokhvalov’s work of the 1920s and 1930s. On joining the group Oktyabr in 1930 he began to work more closely with Alexander Deineka, whose strong influence became equally important. The offered lot was painted only a year before his seminal work, Devochka v futbol’ke (1932, The State Russian Museum), and is the earliest and rarest work by this artist ever to have been offered at auction.