CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN ART AUCTION Monday, 25 November 2019, 14:30
IMPORTANT RUSSIAN ART AUCTION Wednesday, 27 November, 2019, 10:30
Asia House, 63 New Cavendish St, London W1G 7LP
In an unprecedented and exciting development within the Russian market, MacDougall’s is thrilled to announce that it will be holding an auction devoted to Russian Contemporary Art in London on November 25.
This important sale will be the first in London to feature such a carefully curated selection of works by such a particularly wide variety of Contemporary and Non-Conformist artists, and features works drawn from a truly international collecting base that includes Hong Kong and Sweden as well as Russia.
The auction will highlight significant works by artists as diverse as the more established Contemporary practitioners such as Oleg Tselkov and Oscar Rabin to pioneering artists of the younger generation including Pavel Pepperstein and Evgeny Mitta. The auction has been
deliberately calibrated to include pieces at an accessible price point, with low estimates starting at £500 for two of Alexander Zakharov’s engaging yet oddly profound works, and includes a wide array of important works estimated below the £10,000 mark. As such, collectors are being offered a rare opportunity to acquire leading works from an exceptional selection of major artists of the period at a competitive level, from an auction which is expected to lead the way in establishing the future market for this field.
The auction will be led by Mikhail Shvartsman’s iconic work Krepost Glavy (estimate £70,000–90,000) from an important European collection. Executed over the course of a decade – 1978 to 1987 – the composition effectively chronicles the artist’s creative journey during this period amidst the atmosphere of intoxicating intellectual ferment. Like many of 
his works, Krepost Glavy was conceived by Shvartsman as an image-sign, a figure representing a constant divine presence.
Pavel Pepperstein’s “Empty Icons” Series will occupy an important place within the auction (estimate £70,000–90,000). In this series, some meditative searches of the artist are manifested as part of his work as a member of the group of artists known as “Inspection Medical Hermeneutics”, of which he was the founder.
Particular attention should be paid to the landmark work by Oleg Vassiliev A Road, painted in 1988 (estimate £
35,000–50,000), in which the artist refers to this central image within his work. The art critic Vitaly Patsyukov wrote that Vassiliev’s work itself also resembles a road, “a path where every step opens up another dimension of reality. Steppe or forest, highway or path – this road determines human destiny, full of suspense and expectations”.
Amongst other top lots included in the auction are examples of works by Ivan Chuikov, Boris Orlov, Oscar Rabin, Oleg Tselkov and Eduard Gorokhovsky.
