Paris – A new sale Rebel Spirits: Non-Conformist Art from Important European Collections will be held at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr on 8 November 2022 in Paris. The auction will feature more than 70 paintings by artists such as Oscar Yakovlevich Rabin, Vasily Yakovlevich Sitnikov, Vladimir Weisberg, Eduard Arkadievich Steinberg, Oleg Tselkov, Ilya Kabakov, many of whom are part of a diaspora forced to leave their homeland as a result of persecution.
The art authorised by the Soviet regime was Socialist Realism which consisted of figurative art depicting workers, the working classes, and the defenders of the regime in heroic postures. Any other artistic trend that contravened the official style was banned and considered 'degenerate'. Opposed to Socialist Realism, these artists were united by their rejection of a state-imposed art movement rather than any other defining characteristics, and so were grouped together without forming a school. They were not bound by any manifesto and took multiple paths. In 1974, a group of artists, who were prevented from showing their work in officially sanctioned exhibitions, decided to show their drawings in the street, Oscar Rabin was among them. Repression was not long in coming: the Soviet authorities sent bulldozers and destroyed all the works on display.
Persecuted, many non-conformist artists were forced to leave their native land for Europe or the United States. At the end of the 1980s, painters such as Ilya Kabakov, Erik Boulatov, Oscar Rabin and Vladimir Yankilevsky went to New York or settled in Paris.
Oscar Yakovlevich Rabin (1928-2018) followed in the footsteps of Chaïm Soutine or Marc Chagall, with his views of urban life in a style between Expressionism and Realism. Inspired by everyday life, his works comprise still lifes, landscapes - such as the barracks in the Moscow suburb, Lianozovo - packets of Marlboro cigarettes, bottles of vodka and herrings, often using them as objects with which to criticise Soviet life. This gave him a reputation for being the "leader" of artistic dissent in Russia. Bouquet in a Landscape at Lianozovo is a still life from 1957 from the Vladimir Nemukhin collection (estimate: €50,000 - 70,000).
Vasily Yakovlevich Sitnikov (1915-1987) is a Russian-born artist who became a naturalised American in 1980. His works were marked by his stay in a psychiatric hospital. Recognised by major institutions after his emigration to the United States, including the MoMA, Sitnikov's idiosyncratic personal style deliberately depicts objects in an indistinct way. Monastery is a tempera-on-canvas that, according to Sitnikov's autobiography, was "roughly" sketched by his student and wife, Lidia Krokhina, and then finished by the artist. The painting was acquired directly from the artist by Professor Franco Miele in Rome (estimate: €60,000 - 80,000).
Vasily Yakovlevich Sitnikov Monastery, Tempera-on-canvas
Estimate: €60,000 - 80,000
Vladimir Yankilevsky (1938-2018) mixes abstraction and figuration for his mixed media works. Born in Moscow into a family of artists, he held his first solo exhibition at Moscow University in 1962. It was at this time that he met his future wife, Rimma, who became his muse and the subject of his many works. During these years, he earned a living as an illustrator for publishing houses, while all the time working in secret in his studio on his non-conformist art. Vladimir and Rimma decided to settle in Paris. Yankilevsky is famous for his mixed media collages, triptychs and installations. From the Ville is a 1991 work on paper previously exhibited in the artist's retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery in 1996 (estimate: €4,000 - 6,000).
Vladimir Yankilevsky, From the Ville, 1991, pastel and collage on paper
Estimate: €4,000 - 6,000
Partly self-taught, having been expelled from prestigious art schools before joining the Faculty of Theatrical Arts in St. Petersburg, Oleg Tselkov (born 1934) found his subject very early on: all his life he painted what he himself called “faces". The artist claimed that at a young age he had an epiphany that became his guiding principle: that the essence of humanity was neither mask nor face, but something difficult to describe, rather a composite portrait of the aggressive and anonymous crowd. Two Green Heads from a private collection in San Francisco is an oil on canvas estimated at €24,000 - 34,000.
Oleg Tselkov, Two Green Heads, Oil on canvas
Estimate: €24,000 - 34,000
Other highlights of the sale included:
In the 1960s, Eduard Arkadievich Steinberg (1937-2012) used a lightened palette and images of organic forms. These forms were later replaced by the cross, the circle, the triangle, the square, the prism and the sphere. Composition dated November 1978 comes from the Claude Bernard Gallery in New York and is offered with an estimate of €10,000 to €12,000.
Ilya Kabakov (born 1933), who calls himself a Soviet artist, deviates from the Socialist Realist path, recreating in his installations the psychological effects of an ongoing struggle with ideology. The work in the sale is Istoria Anni Petrovni (Many friends were in Crimea this summer) is from the album Anna Petrovna has a dream from 1973 and has an estimate of €8,000 - 10,000.
Daria Khristova born Chernenko, Head of Sale, said: "Long in the shadows, non-conformist artists were previously supported by a network of admirers throughout Europe, especially Paris. Now they have been rediscovered in recent years by a much wider audience, with their works on display in many museums around the world such the Centre Georges Pompidou. Now is the time to put the spotlight on these artists who, for so many years, battled against the authorities to make their voice heard.”
