NIKOLAI PETROVICH BOGDANOV-BELSKY | NEW SONGS

Exhibition catalogue Russisk Maleriudstilling, Copenhagen: Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, 1929, no.25 listed

Copenhagen, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Russisk Maleriudstilling, 7-20 February 1929, no.25

Celebrated for his genre paintings depicting village children, Bogdanov-Belsky fled Soviet Russia and settled in Riga in 1921 where he remained until the Soviet occupation. He exhibited widely in Europe in the 1920s and the present lot was shown at an important exhibition of Russian art held at the Free Art Exhibitions Agency in Copenhagen in 1929 alongside works by other émigré Russian artists including Alexander Benois, Boris Grigoriev, Konstantin Somov and Alexander Yakovlev.

In Russia Bogdanov-Belsky had been a member of the Itinerants whose paintings often carried a social or moral message and he frequently depicted children either hard at study or practising traditional folk instruments, as in the present lot.