VADIM ZAKHAROV | Sculpture No.7 from the 'Mythologies' Series

signed and titled in Cyrillic on the reverseoil on canvas with metal plaqueSotheby’s 1988 sale featured eight large-scale works by Vadim Zakharov (fig.1), an artist who more recently was the recipient of Russia’s most prestigious contemporary art award, the Kandinsky Prize, and represented Russia at the 2013 Venice Biennale. He tended to produce his paintings in series of eight, normally with inscrutable serial numbers in their titles ‘to underline this sense of system’ (M.Cullerne Bown, 'Contemporary Russian Art', p.89). Witty and diverse, his work like so much of the Moscow conceptualists’ revolves around the painted word. In the present work, his hallmark elephantine figures and speech bubbles have been half obscured by a thick layer of white paint applied on top. His work was a feature of the 2005 'Russia!' exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. He now lives and works in Berlin and Moscow: an artist, editor, collector, and archivist of Moscow conceptual art.

Acquired by the present owner in 2006

Original canvas which is slack on the stretcher. There is a line of cracking with associated paint loss above the trunk in the center; another vertical line of cracking approximately 30cm above the plaque; horizontal repaired cracks and minor punctures in the center of the left edge and a few minor cracks in places elsewhere, including some fine lines of craquelure to the white impasto. There is some paint loss to the lower torso of the left-hand figure. There are abrasions to the corners and a layer of light surface dirt. Unframed.
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