Post-War and Contemporary Russian Art from a Private Collection
Post-War and Contemporary Russian Art from a Private Collection
Property from a Private European Collection
Semyon Faibisovich
That Is the Question
Auction Closed
December 1, 01:41 PM GMT
Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private European Collection
Semyon Faibisovich
b. 1949
That Is the Question
signed with initials in Cyrillic and dated 87 l.l.; further signed, titled and dated on the reverse
oil on canvas
Canvas: 200 by 150cm, 78¾ by 59in.
Private collection, USA
Sotheby's New York, Russian Art Volume II. Post War and Contemporary Art, 15 April 2008, lot 238
Exhibition catalogue Ich Lebe – Ich Sehe, Künstler der Achtziger Jahre in Moskau, Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1988, illustrated
Exhibition catalogue Adaptation and Negation of Socialist Realism: Contemporary Soviet Art, Ridgefield: Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990, p.17 illustrated; p.38 listed
Faibisovich, Moscow: Regina Gallery, 2001, p.40 illustrated; p.129 listed
Initially a student at the Moscow Architectural Institute, Faibisovich turned to painting ignited by a talent and passion for both photography and drawing. He was particularly impressed by the work of the American Photorealist artist Richard Estes, which he saw at the 1975 exhibition of American art held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Combining his love for both artforms, Faibisovich’s paintings reach across photorealism into both the abstract and quotidian capturing the daily life in the Soviet Union.
In That Is the Question (1987) the focal point centres on a question mark formed by the shadows cast from an unseen window projected on an empty sofa bed. In the upper left a fragment from Winter Sunshine (1986) from the Moscow Suburban Electric Train series can be seen. The fragment is out of focus and invokes a sense of enigma by drawing a narrative arc between the quotidian repetition of the commute and the empty home.