INTERVIEW: Diego Giolitti on Contemporary Russian Art

Contemporary Russian art - a primer
Emerging art market expert Diego Giolitti unravels a Russian art scene beyond billionaires and celebrity gallerists

Think of Russian art and you are more than likely to think of billionaire collectors and celebrity gallerists, but a group show in London aims to refocus attention to the work of contemporary Russian art and artists. From the deeply political work of artists from the Nonconformist movement such as Vladimir Ovchinnikov and Vyacheslav Mikhailov, to contemporary art starts like Ilya Gaponov, to emerging names like Denis Patrakeev and Alexandre Dashevsky, the show promises to be a comprehensive overview of Russian art now.


Curating Past, Present & Future is Diego Giolitti – a specialist in emerging art markets with a focus on Iranian and Russian contemporary art. Ahead of the opening, Giolitti gives Phaidon an insight into contemporary Russian art


Given Russia's history and its current political climate, is the work in this show overtly political?
The political references in the work are not necessarily specific to the political climate of Russia, but rather to broader global issues of freedom of expression, anti-establishment tendencies, and general resistance to state authorities that suffocate the people.  Political views and expressions such as these can be seen in art all over the world, not just Russian contemporary art.


We do represent a number of Nonconformist artists, but their work is not necessarily politically motivated.  The term “Nonconformist” is usually employed in reference to Russian art that did not adhere to the dogma of Socialist Realism as ordained by Stalin and pursued from the 1930s throughout the 1980s, but it does not necessarily imply an anti-Soviet vision. In fact, the works of Vladimir Ovchinnikov neither challenged the system nor tried to be sensational. Rather, his paintings speak to his quest for an individual space beyond politics and Socialist ideology. That said, the Russian Nonconformist movement and Dissident Art do share the same polemical spirit regarding the denial of individual freedoms still existing in many parts of the world: prominent cases include those of Iranian artist Rokni Haerizadeh and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei arrested for his opposition to the Chinese Communist regime. 


What is contemporary Russian art right now?
Russian art is a great many things right now. We are after all, now witnessing its re-emergence after many decades of invisibility. Though not strictly contemporary artists, we can speak about Russian Rayonism and Constructivism, and artists like Serge Poliakoff, a master of geometric abstract art, or indeed the founders of the Rayonism movement Natalia Gontcharova and her partner Mikhail Larionov.


Moving to the Nonconformist generation, some of the originators of the movement are still living and producing not only artwork but outstanding sales results as well such as Chemyakin, who first became famous abroad and only gained notoriety in his home country in the late 1980s, when his controversial works were able to re-enter Russia. There is Vladimir Ovchinnikov, a direct contemporary of Chemyakin, who stayed in St. Petersburg and continued the Nonconformist struggle after the 1964 Hermitage exhibition, of which both he and Chemyakin were organizers. 


The perception of Russian is by and large limited to billionaire collectors, gallerists, and magazine owners - are these people giving the wrong impression of the Russian art scene?
Quite frankly, yes. In the field of art, among the so-called emerging art markets, one of the most active, fruitful and worthy of attention is Russia, but not solely for the reasons above. Russia’s entry into the international market is very interesting, both for what is on offer and for the demand for works of art.  Yes, Russia is a country that boasts an ever-increasing stable market, with wealthy individuals increasing at a rate of 15 per cent per annum, but Russian collectors are interested in maintaining a healthy international market for Russian art. They are first and foremost knowledgeable collectors. Further supporting the growth of the international market for Russian art are key experts: Joanna Vickery, who has made Sotheby’s Russian Department into the most successful in the field worldwide, and private collectors like Pierre-Christian Brochet, a Frenchman living in Moscow, who has built one of the most impressive collections of contemporary Russian art in the world, to cite but two examples.


In the Russian market, contemporary art is the area where interest is the highest. Following the almost complete absence of this field in auctions over the last twenty years, it has recently created an incredible amount of interest and enthusiasm among international collectors. Sotheby’s last auction of Russian art on the 28 November 2011 brought in a staggering £5,597,000 – a truly amazing feat in these troubled times. But it should be noted that the market for contemporary Russian art is quite structured.  It is backed by a solid group of national collectors and by a solid network of private Russian galleries operating in synergy in order to more effectively support artists on the international market. For example in 2007 two of the most important galleries in Moscow, the Triumph Gallery and the Yakut Gallery, joined forces precisely for this reason. The support from Russian commercial art galleries and private collectors show that the results form the auction houses are just the tip of the iceberg, allowing works to emerge after years of ‘invisible’ underground activity and private transactions.


If you’re interested in reading about a global crosseection of emerging art talents, we recommend Vitmain P2 - a dynamic overview of the best new contemporary painting from around the world – and Creamier – an up-to-date survey of the world’s most important emerging designers to know.


Past Present & Future is at London’s Erarta Galleries until April 20th and 30% of proceeds from sales will be donated to the Gift of Life foundation to aid children with cancer in Russia.


Past, Present & Future
April 12 – April 28

Erarta Galleries, London, United Kingdom
erartagalleries.com
Opening hours:
Tues - Fri: 10AM - 6PM
Sat: 11AM - 5PM
Monday by appointment

http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/art/events/2012/april/12/contemporary-russian-art-a-primer/

Russian Master Leonid Steele celebrates his 90th birthday with cover of an American Magazine

 

For Leonid Steele, a painter often called “a living legacy to the art of the Soviet Union”, holding in his hands a fresh February issue of the respected art magazine “Fine Art Connoisseur” marks a very special moment. As one of the leading practitioners of the Russian School of the Soviet Period known as “Socrealism” he had his share of public recognition in the Soviet Union throughout his long career there from the 1950s to 1980s. Residing in Los Angeles since 1990, he is now experiencing a fresh wave of recognition by the young generation of artists in his new home in America.

As the world once again faces anxiety and uncertainty, Leonid has an important lesson to share from his remarkable life story and through his art aptly reflecting his tumultuous times. Born in Ukraine, he lived through the great famine of 1933, known in Russian and Ukrainian as “golodomor,” and considered by some a deliberate act of communism and one of the genocides of the 20th century. Later he survived a severe concussion in the Great Patriotic War (WWII). As a true individual within the Soviet art world, he never yielded his stubborn creative spirit to the hammer of the Soviet bureaucratic system.

A graduate of the venerated Leningrad Repin Art Institute, (formerly the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts), he is one of the masters of what became known in the West as Soviet Impressionism of the 1950s – early 1960s, and one of the pioneers and leading masters of the Severe Style of the 1960s.

As a painter, Steele is significant and quite unique in both showcasing the strongest aspects of this important school, as well as in continuously pushing its boundaries. His career is a life-long lab of stylistic development in search of the most powerful expression for his major works. He managed to preserve his innate need to “keep going” and to achieve recognition by the public while perfectly willing to pay the price if necessary for daring to succeed on his own, outside the expected steps of “going through the ranks” or favors of government-appointed official art-bureaucracy -- something that the tightly controlled bureaucratic system could not afford to forgive for its own survival.

“What my Dad had to go through to pay for his stubborn individualism and what the bureaucratic art system of the Soviet Union had put him through are quite staggering by comparison with the friendly spirit of camaraderie in the American art world. Yet the rewards of speaking with his powerful works directly to the viewers thirsty for a liberating sense of truthfulness about their lives in a totalitarian pressure cooker were also immense” says his son Alexey Steele, a noted LA painter in his own right.

The vast collection, now under the care of Alexey, represents a look – rare in its completeness -- at the inner workings of an important practitioner of this school. “The core, most important works are really of such a unique level that they shall eventually belong to important public institutions”, says Alexey Steele. Lots of works, including some of the important early works in the collection, are also badly in need of some serious restoration, which will take sizable funds. To this end, Alexey is planning to make some works available without “commercializing” them via the official website www.leonidsteele.com

Managing to preserve and nurture his individual spirit and artistic freedom, Leonid Steele became one of the early pioneers of the Severe Style, a powerful visual language that combined a strong figurative backbone of academic tradition with a laconic language of simplified forms, resulting in such major works as “The Land” and “The Family”.

This tenacious creative force not only did not fade with age, but it seems to have become a hidden fountain of youth for Steele as today he paints with just as much passion and energy as ever, still turning out some amazing works. Perhaps the most fascinating of them are his portrait studies, deeply striking in freshness and truthfulness of character rendition. Enormously forceful, each based on an hour or hour and a half live sitting from his LA-Russian friends, people of the former Soviet Union and the last remaining members of remarkable generation. And what an amazingly faithful devotion to his characters...these are the same people he painted in the 50s, 60s, 70s, but now he paints them in LA, all bearing a remarkable sense of wisdom, strength and completeness of a long journey. Till the end, the Master remains faithful to portraying his now aging and so quickly disappearing truly great generation that survived and persevered through the hard roads and turns of the turbulent 20th century.

Celebrating Leonid’s 90th birthday crystallizes the importance of inviting a serious look at the cultural significance of this unique era as a whole, in its complete picture, and finally bridging the historic divide along the Western Modernism – Eastern Realism fault line.

So what’s the main secret the old Russian Master has to share with young talents of our time? “Going all the way and no matter what” is the only road to the glistening mountain of any true art.
http://www.leonidsteele.com