Aleksandr Aref'ev: zhivopis', grafika (Aleksandr Aref'ev: painting, graphic art)
St. Petersburg: KGallery, 2016. Pb. These works from the late 1940s through the early 1970s define a style of Leningrad art in which the artist tempered traditional figural or realistic painting with experimental styles inherited from the avant-garde and the ironic tone of Soviet artists who spurned official art and could not exhibit (Aref'ev started the Order of Unsellable Artists). The paintings and drawings in this gallery exhibition catalogue show Aref'ev's characteristic ability to distort forms and landscapes, discard perspective, and nonetheless create a picture of his time, something like genre portraits of its absurdities and its joys. Also published here are articles on Aref'ev by Aref'ev's teacher Aleksandr Traugot and his classmate Valentin Gromov. 243 p., 27 cm, approx. 250 color illus., Rus. Item #2038
This edition is part of a series based on gallery exhibitions of paintings and drawings by artists of the late twentieth century working in Leningrad. These catalogues make accessible to historians of twentieth-century art and visual culture a vital branch of Soviet-Russian art. Curators draw on private collections to show works characterizing various stages of the artists' careers.
Price: $77.00