I’m slowly losing the count of events I attended and places I visited in the last 3 months. Today, however, I went to the Antique Salon in Moscow at the Central House of the Artist, and I am sure you will be most interested to learn about the event.
The event is is supported by the International Confederation of Antique and Art Dealers. Having started with mere 18 galleries from Moscow and Petersburg participating in 1996, the Salon has grown into a splendid showcase of antique and art collections and a fair with 250 participants from Moscow, Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Samara, Chelyabinsk, Tula, and Ryazan. This year there are also foreign participants: James Butterwick Gallery (London, UK) and St Lucas Gallery (Tallinn, Estonia). The Salon is spread across floors 2 and 3 of 9000 sq. m. of one of the main art venues in Moscow.
Vasiliy Bychkov, the General Director of Expo-Park Exhibitions Projects (the organisers of the Salon), noted the growing interest in Russian art throughout the world. Russia presently has a 3 per cent share on the global art market, but this is a very rough estimate. Paintings by Russian artists are sold for millions of dollars at the auctions: “Bluebells” by Natalia Goncharova went for $4,7mln, while paintings by Vasily Vereschagin, Leon Bakst and Orest Kiprensky were sold for between $2,24mln and $1,1mln. The Russian auction also saw a record: RUB 36mln was paid for an Igor Grabar’ painting, “Pears on the red tablecloth“.
There are themed exhibitions at the Salon, normally dedicated to a specific period or topic. James Butterwick Gallery and Ravenscourt Gallery present the drawings of a Russian artist Boris Grigoriev. Along with several nude sketches there is also a delicate colour cardboard and guache painting, Show (In the Nursery), dated 1912. This is an eloquent testimony to the love of circus that many children had had at the turn of the 19-20th cc., which was usually documented in literature (Kuprin, Gorky, Grigorovich).
Russian avant-garde artists of 1910-30s are also set apart in a themed display. Perhaps, one of the most unique and intriguing displays is dedicated to the works of Russian painters produced in the first half of 20th c. when many of them had emigrated and came in contact with the flourishing or popular styles of art-deco and art moderne. Some works vividly indicate the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite art.
2012 has been declared the cross-cultural year between Russia and Germany, and so the centrepiece of the Salon is a special exhibition of Late Gothic German painters from private Moscow collections. Curated by Professor V. Sadkov who heads the department of Old Masters at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition is called “The Kranach family, their predecessors and contemporaries“. The showcase of the German painting from the late 15th – first half of 16th cc. is a rare treat for everyone, but especially Russians themselves. It so happened that in the 18th c., the so-called Golden Age of art collecting in Russia, the antiquarians were very fond of Italian and French old masters, while the artists of the Northern Renaissance, among them Albrecht Duerer and Martin Schongauer, were practically ignored. The situation began to change in the early 19th c. when the resonance of the Sturm und Drang movement reached Russia. The great poet and translator Vasiliy Zhukovsky did a lot to propagate the German literature, while Russian collectors (among them – an historian V. Tatischev and diplomat P. Vyazemsky) turned their eye to the art of the previously ridiculed German Gothic. Due to the time lost in amassing Italian and French art, both Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts remained thin on the German Gothic paintings in their collections. Bizarrely, the exhibition at the Antique Salon is now the third largest display of these delicate and unique paintings.
As one might have guessed, the items of display at this exhibition are not on sale. Still, there is a myriad of other works and objects one can buy: Joseph Brodsky’s first edition of his second collection of verses published in New York; a copy of Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories published in London in 1978 without the author’s knowledge; contemporary descriptions of coronations of Elizabeth I (18th c.) and Alexander III (19th c.); a watercolour illustrated album on Siberia (19th c.); enamel boxes, plates, crockery and cutlery; old icons from 16-19th cc.; Japanese paintings and vases; Chinese vases from the turn of 16-17th cc.; furniture, sculpture, candelabra, and much more.
Art export from Russia is currently not allowed, although the situation may change. However, those looking for unique gifts to their Russian friends or business partners will surely find something truly outstanding.
I am very grateful to the Expo-Park PR managers for providing access to the press-conference and preview of the Salon. The 33rd Antique Salon in Moscow is open daily between October 20 and 28, from 10am to 6pm at the Central House of the Artist on Krymsky Val (Oktyabrskaya or Park Kultury metro station).
Below is a Flickr slideshow of the photos from the Salon.