Russian Pictures
Russian Pictures
Property from a Private European Collection
Santi Apostoli, Venice
Auction Closed
December 1, 03:47 PM GMT
Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private European Collection
Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky
1876 - 1956
Santi Apostoli, Venice
signed in Cyrillic l.l.; further signed, titled, numbered 551 and dated 1924 on the reverse
oil on canvas
Canvas: 79 by 61cm, 31 by 24in.
Framed: 96 by 77cm, 37¾ by 30¼in.
V.Nikolskii, Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky, Moscow: Vsekokhudozhnik, 1936, p.12 listed
Konchalovsky. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964, p.110, zhi 440 listed as being in London
M.Neiman, P.P. Konchalovsky, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1967, listed under works from 1924 as Most-San Apostoli, v Londone
In 1924, Konchalovsky was granted permission to leave the USSR for Italy in order to participate in the 14th Venice Biennale. The Italian organisers of the exhibition were particularly eager to show recent works by artists from the Soviet Union as a decade (and Revolution) had passed since Russia had last participated. With 13 works in the exhibition catalogue, Konchalovsky had more works on display than any of the other Russian artists.
The early 1920s marks an important period in Konchalovsky’s stylistic development as he turns away from the influences of cubism and Cézannism to develop a more realistic and explicitly Russian style of painting, focusing on real people and everyday life.
In Venice, Konchalovsky was shown around by an old friend from his Paris days, artist Emile Bernard, an in-depth connoisseur of La Serenissima. Captivated by the city and its unique architecture, Konchalovsky painted a total of eight cityscapes during his trip, of which the present lot is one. Santi Apostoli captures Venice’s contrasting colours with the melancholic tones of its ancient stones, the opaque green of the water’s surface, and the warm, sun-kissed colours of its centuries-old lime-painted walls. What could be a more typical scene from Venetian life than the narrow Rio dei Santi Apostoli suspended over its canal with strolling figures contemplating a passing Gondola? ‘I was sad to leave Venice’, the artist later recalled, ‘... Although we didn’t stay in Venice for long, I must still have absorbed at least a tiny part of its soul... Yes, it was a happy, joyful trip. All the works I brought back were appreciated and successful...They would have made an even stronger impact had I not been captivated, to the point of complete enslavement, by the ideal beauty of what I had seen. Admittedly, this ‘captivation’ made my painting warmer and more emotional; however, while I was working, I wasn’t fully in control of myself, and that, as I see it, is not good for an artist’. (V.A. Nikolsky, Pyotr Petrovich Konchalovsky, Moscow, 1936, p.95)