Vladimir Weisberg

Acquired directly from the artist by the father of the present owner in Moscow in 1961

Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, 8 peintres de Moscou: Kharitonov, Krasnopevtsev, Nemoukhine, Plavinski, Rabine, Svechnikov, Weisberg, Zverev, February-March 1974, no.89

Exhibition catalogue 8 peintres de Moscou: Kharitonov, Krasnopevtsev, Nemoukhine, Plavinski, Rabine, Svechnikov, Weisberg, Zverev, Grenoble, 1974, p.28, no.89 listed
Exhibition catalogue V.G. Weisberg. Zhivopis', akvarel', risunok, Moscow: Gendal'f, 1994, p.114, no.248 listed in the artist's inventory

Original canvas. There is a layer of light surface dirt. A slight dent in the canvas is visible to the left of the base of the left bowl. In overall good condition. Inspection under UV light reveals a discoloured varnish layer but no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a black and gold wooden slip frame.
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The early 1960s represent a transitional period for Weisberg. His enthusiasm for the Russian avant-garde was supplemented by a new interest in contemporary western-European painting, which was becoming more accessible after the World Festival of Youth and Students held in Moscow in 1957.

In comparison with the paintings of the 1950s, the present lot is executed in a purist and minimalist style, both in terms of composition and space, and in its use of colour. The elevated viewpoint deprives the spatial planes of their familiar perspective and allows them to spread out in parallel to the flatness of the canvas. While some motifs, such as the table and vases, recall the still lifes of Bernard Buffet and Giorgio Morandi others, such as the peaches, clearly point to Paul Cézanne and the Jack of Diamonds group, which was characteristic of Weisberg’s work of the 1950s. In the 1960s Weisberg’s palette begins to change. Gradually departing from the rich palette of his works of the previous decade, the artist appears to subscribe to mainstream contemporary western art with its stripped-back approach to colour. However, for Weisberg this was not a simplification but rather an intensification of the problem of colour. As the present example clearly shows, in his canvases black and white are built up out of a multitude of shades of his core colours and additional ones applied using small brushstrokes reminiscent of Cézanne. His nuances of colour became more subtle eventually developing into a complex system, or ‘structure’ as the artist himself termed it, of colour relationships. Consciously avoiding the illusion of real space, volume and the traditional colour spectrum, he seeks to create a kind of idealised higher-space in his paintings, and to convey a sense of the volatility of the light, air and atmosphere in which the precise contours and volumes of the objective world dissolve.

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