DMITRY LION | Untitled [Three works]

two signed and one also dated '73' l.r.ink on paper, one with crayonLion served on the Eastern front from 1943 to 1952. It was the impact of witness accounts of the Holocaust and ‘that led him to articulate the spiritual beliefs and tragic fate of the Jewish people’ in his work, which became more symbolic and metaphorical from the mid-1960s onwards, combining Old Testament and contemporary history (‘Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change’, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1996, p.194). Large scrolls featured in his early work, but for the main part ink on paper was his chosen medium, and the light weird chaos of short strokes which incorporate faint lines of text, illegible letters and unexpected faces and figures and are immediately recognizable as his hand. David and Bathsheba are recurring figures in his work from the 1970s. Lion was born to a Jewish family in Kaluga and his father was a lawyer and human rights activist. He lived and worked in Paris for a period but died in Moscow. His work has been exhibited in Russia and America, including at the Jewish Museum in New York, the Russian Museum in St Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

Galerie Gorky Basmadjian, Paris

The sheets have discolored and there is a layer of light surface dirt. The work on the palest sheet of paper is creased at the right hand edge. There are a few faint handling marks in places. Unframed.
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