Andrei Vasilevich Korotkov

David Harrington, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1993

Minneapolis, The Museum of Russian Art, Art for the People, 2004

Exhibition catalogue Hidden Treasures: Russian and Soviet Impressionism 1930s-1970s, Scotsdale: Fleischer Museum, 1994, p.194, no.111 illustrated

The canvas has been laid down on cradled fibreboard. There are several areas of craquelure throughout the composition, notably to the grass below the football, to the lower left corner, to the sky and to the trees above the tribune on the right. There is a layer of light surface dirt with spots of dirt in places, notably along the top and bottom edges. Inspection under UV light reveals an uneven layer of discoloured varnish, an area of old retouching to the sky in the upper right corner, retouching along the top edge as well as other scattered areas of retouching elsewhere in the sky. Held in a gilt wooden frame,. Unexamined out of frame.
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Football was a favourite post-revolutionary theme ever since Alexander Deineka’s large-scale works of the 1920s. The appeal of sport, according to this leading exponent of the genre, was that it was democratic, popular, positive, optimistic, lyrical and able to accommodate ‘shades of feeling’. An emphasis on the ideals of youth, health and unity continued through the Soviet era and images of mass gatherings in stadiums remained popular. A Kiev-based artist, Korotkov would no doubt have been aware of the legendary football matches which took place in the city against occupation forces during the Second World War, subsequently the subject of numerous books and films and part of Kiev’s heroic war history.