Lot 232
  • 232

Vladimir Weisberg

Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Vladimir Weisberg
  • Portrait of Vishnyakova
  • signed in Cyrillic and dated 63 t.r.; further bearing various exhibition labels on the reverse
  • oil on canvas
  • 80 by 55.5cm, 31 1/2 by 21 3/4 in.

Exhibited

Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery, V.G.Weisberg. Zhivopis', akvarel', risunok, 1994, no.284
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

Literature

Exhibition catalogue V.G.Weisberg. Zhivopis', akvarel', risunok, Moscow: Gendal'f, 1994, p.116, no.284 listed as Vishnyakova
Exhibition catalogue Nonkonformisty: vtoroy russkiy avangard 1955-1988, Cologne: Wienand, 1996, p.249 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue L'arte vietata in URSS 1955-1988, Milan: Electa, 2000, p.145 illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Persecuted Art & Artists under Totalitarian Regimes in Europe During the 20th Century, Bönen: Druck Verlag Kettler, 2003, p.158 illustrated; p.285 listed
Exhibition catalogue Avantgarde im Untergrund. Russische Nonkonformisten aus der Sammlung Bar-Gera, Bern: Benteli Verlag, 2005, p.78 illustrated; p.176, no.141 listed as Frau in Weiss

Condition

Original canvas. There is a light layer of surface dust and dirt. Horizontal cracks are visible throughout the paint layer but are deepest in the body of the sitter. There are a few light scratches and surface abrasions, such as in the lower right of the composition. The underdrawing is visible through the paint layer in the lower right quadrant. Inspection under UV light reveals no obvivous signs of retouching. Held in a simple wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Catalogue Note

The model for Weisberg’s Portrait of Vishnyakova was most likely the wife of Vladimir Vishnyakov, a Mayakovka poet and journalist, who posed for the artist two years earlier in 1961 in Double Portrait of R.Arutyunyan and V.Vishnyakov.

The painting belongs to the series from the 1960s in which Weisberg experimented with sizes and formats, often choosing large, narrow, elongated canvases (the portraits of Aida, 1962, and Ira Illarionova, 1964 (fig.1)) but also canvases of more balanced proportions (the portraits of Olya Severtseva, 1960, and the present lot). Notably, he used similar sizes and formats for some of his still lifes from this period. Extremely belittled heads, stretched or enlarged bodies, exaggeratedly generalised silhouettes, asymmetry and slight deformation, lack of detail in both the representation of figures and the space around them, all these features characterise his portraits of this series. We associate these characteristics with Jean Dubuffet and Alberto Giacometti, whose work Weisberg had seen at the Youth and Student Festival exhibition in 1957 and at the French National Exhibition in Moscow in 1961. The model is obviously of little concern to artist. He treats a portrait as a still life of fabric whose main purpose is to turn the chaos and randomness of folds into a structure with a clear logic. Unlike his portraits of the 1950s, the unity of figures and space during this period is achieved through the dematerialisation of volume. In Portrait of Vishnyakova Weisberg mostly depicts air, uniting the figure and the background as in plein air painting, where everything is transfused with the effects of light and air. His main purpose became the exploration of his limited palette’s possibilities and delicate colour correlations, as a means of creating an ultra-sensuous, non-illusionistic space that aspires to infinity.

We are grateful to Dr Elena Khlopina for providing this catalogue note.