Russian Pictures
Russian Pictures
Property from an Important Private Collection
Lot Closed
June 2, 02:04 PM GMT
Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from an Important Private Collection
BORIS DMITRIEVICH GRIGORIEV
1886-1939
THE COOK
signed in Latin l.l.; further bearing various labels and inscriptions on the backing board
gouache, ink and pencil on paper
Sheet: 38 by 50.5cm, 15 by 20in.
Framed: 54 by 67.5cm, 21¼ by 26½in.
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David Burliuk, New York
Thence by descent to his granddaughter Mary Burliuk Holt
Sotheby's New York, Russian Art, 15 April 2008, lot 79
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibition catalogue Boris Grigoriev, New York: Lilienfeld Galleries, 1938, no.22 listed as The Cook
Exhibition catalogue 17th International Water Color Exhibition, Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1938, no.95 listed as Antofagasta Pacifique
New York, Lilienfeld Galleries, Boris Grigoriev, 10-29 January 1938, no.22
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 17th International Water Color Exhibition, 28 April - 30 May 1938, no.95
The present work belongs to a series of around 300 gouaches created during the artist’s two trips to Chile in 1928-1929 and 1936-1937. His reputation preceding him, Grigoriev and his wife were invited by the Chilean government to teach at the Academy of Arts in Santiago in 1928. That same year, a retrospective of Grigoriev’s paintings, held at the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts, was extremely well received with critics praising the artist’s incredible plasticity and expressiveness. The few years he spent teaching and painting in Chile were to have a profound influence on the Chilean avant-garde and inspire such artists as Camilo Mori (1896-1973) and Maria Tupper (1898-1965).
Painted in Antofagasta, a port city in Northern Chile 700 miles from Santiago, the present composition dates from the artist’s second trip to Latin America. Two years after Grigoriev’s return to the USA the work was exhibited at the 1938 Lilienfeld Galleries exhibition in New York and later that same year at the 17th Water Color Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Critics compared the South American works exhibited in his New York solo exhibition to the works of Raoul Dufy and marvelled: ‘where is the painter of The Brothers Karamazov? Where is the dirtiness of Gorky’s face? Where is the stiffness of the Faces of Russia? We cannot find them anymore, we can see a very different Grigoriev, different and new’ (L.Kamyshnikov, ‘Neugomonnaya dusha: Na vystavke khudozhnika Borisa Grigorieva’, Novoe russkoe slovo, New York, 1938).