VASILY SITNIKOV | Nude

signed in Cyrillic and dated '1986' on the reverse; further inscribed in Cyrillic and dated '1986.VII.13.01' on the stretcheroil and mixed media on canvasSitnikov was arrested in 1941, declared insane by the authorities and sent to Kazan for treatment. He returned to Moscow in 1944 where he established himself as an artist and influenced a number of his non-conformist contemporaries such as Vladimir Weisberg with the hazy mist-like effect he created by applying dry brush to canvas. He emigrated to the West in 1975 and died in New York.

Acquired in the 1990s from Konstantin Kuzminsky, a close friend of the artist

'Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde', New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 1998, p.230 illustrated

Original canvas. There is a layer of light surface dirt. There are a few scattered spots of paint, notably to the lower right quadrant and to the center of the right edge, some very minor pinholes near the top edge, a minor scratch in the top left corner and in a few places elsewhere. Examination under UV light reveals no apparent sign of retouching. Held in a simple gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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