Russian Pictures
Russian Pictures
Property from a Private Collection, United Kingdom
Auction Closed
November 26, 01:34 PM GMT
Estimate
120,000 - 180,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
ANDREI ANDREEVICH MYLNIKOV
1919-2012
NUDE IN A LANDSCAPE
signed with initials and dated 71 l.r.
oil on canvas
59.5 by 69.5cm, 23½ by 27½in.
This sleeping nude in a natural idyll dating from 1971 is one of the earliest versions of one of the artist’s most recognisable subjects. Andrei Mylnikov abandoned Socialist Realism fairly early on in his career to forge his own distinct style and he created much of his best work in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mylnikov was a representative of the Leningrad School of Painting and studied under its founding father, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. He was director of the studio of monumental painting at the Academy of Arts and created a lot of monumental work: mosaics, frescoes, decorative schemes for the Leningrad Metro and a portrait of Lenin for the curtains of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses which is still one of the best-known images of Soviet power. This sense of monumentality bleeds into his lyrical series of nudes in pastoral landscapes and is what makes his treatment of a subject more frequently associated with the Renaissance or 18th century feel so fresh and so modern.