Oleg Tselkov

St Petersburg, The State Russian Museum; Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery; Frankfurt am Main, Städel et al., Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, 1996-1997
Verona, Palazzo Forti, L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, 7 March - 4 June 2000
Ashdod, Art Museum Ashdod, Persecuted Art & Artists under Totalitarian Regimes in Europe During the 20th Century, 22 June - 21 September 2003
Bern, Kunstmuseum Bern, Avantgarde im Untergrund. Russische Nonkonformisten aus der Sammlung Bar-Gera, 3 February - 24 April 2005
Bratislava, The Slovak National Gallery, Nonkonformisti. Druhá ruská avantgarda 1955-1988. Zbierka Bar-Gera, 14 November 2008 - 22 February 2009

Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, Cologne: Wienand, 1996, p.263 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, Milan: Electa, 2000, p.177 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Persecuted Art & Artists under Totalitarian Regimes in Europe During the 20th Century, Bönen: Druck Verlag Kettler, 2003, p.164 illustrated; p.284 listed
Exhibition catalogue Avantgarde im Untergrund. Russische Nonkonformisten aus der Sammlung Bar-Gera, Bern: Benteli Verlag, 2005, p.106 illustrated; p.177, no.149 listed
Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisti. Druhá ruská avantgarda 1955-1988. Zbierka Bar-Gera, Bratislava: Slovenská Národná Galéria, 2008, p.132, no.2 illustrated

Circus with Blue Background: Original canvas. There are frame abrasions with associated paint loss along all four edges. There are areas of paint shrinkage and craquelure to the pink pigment, notably around the face and at the centre of the left edge, as well as in the upper right. There is a fleck of paint loss to the pink pigment in the lower left. The surface is covered in a layer of dirt. Inspection under UV light reveals retouching to the face, to the left edge, to two areas in the lower left and along the curtain pole. Held in a simple wooden frame with grey canvas slip. Unexamined out of frame. Circus with Red Background: Original canvas. There are frame abrasions with associated paint loss along all four edges. There are areas of paint shrinkage and craquelure to the face and neck of the protagonist and to the top right part of the curtain. The surface is covered in a layer of dirt. Inspection under UV light reveals several areas of retouching to the face and along the left edge. Held in a simple wooden frame with grey canvas slip. Unexamined out of frame.
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The present lot dates from the late 1960s, a high-point in the artist’s career. The recognised leader of the Soviet Underground, at the time buzzing with both artists and ideas, he had his own faithful public, easily able to read his codes and metaphors. It was at this time that he found his own poetic language, and simultaneously the need to improvise. It was the very theme of the circus that encouraged Tselkov to combine his tried and tested approach with an element of risk.

In speaking of Tselkov’s poetry, I mean the constancy of certain characteristics. In those years his palette definitively establishes itself; artificial, slightly metallic, inspired by Malevich’s late work, almost with the texture of industrial spray-paint; but also his characteristic spatial resolution – an optical effect which in these works has a hint of theatricality. In his circus works this can be explained by the very theme of the spectacle, however this artificiality can also be seen as tribute to Tselkov’s only teacher, the great director and artist Nikolai Akimov.

The main feature of Tselkov’s poetry is the incredibly assertive imagery, which he found immediately and remained true to forever after: the red-faced (or ‘scalded’ as his wife so aptly expressed it), aggressive creatures with rotten teeth, human-like but at the same time contradictory to the very idea of humanity. Critics have interpreted the essence of these creatures in many ways. Some saw in them the anthropological expression (or degeneration) of the social experiment which was the Soviet Union. Alain Bosquet saw in them the visualisation of some sort of incarnation of Tselkov as a ‘humourist and incurable terrorist’. The artist himself spoke with a typically modernist and philosophical confidence of the flip side of the divine – faces, in which ‘there is nothing of god’.

In the present lot Tselkov’s corporality is both aggressor and victim. Red grotesque faces appear everywhere, at every imaginable turn and angle; but they are have been pinned down by various metal objects; buttons, nails and curtain rings. Critics have described Tselkov’s images as hackneyed, as if his approach were deliberate. I however would speak of matrices which make up the world of his paintings. These matrices have form-defining as well as metaphorical connotations. The corporality in Tselkov’s work is created under pressure according to a given image and form, while at the same time somewhere inside there are processes, independent and unaccounted for, which produce something living. On a metaphysical level this refers to the build-up and the strengthening of the presence of the artist’s images in our visual world.

We are grateful to Dr Alexander Borovsky for providing this catalogue note.