Lot 246: A Spring Rubbish Pile in the Nearby Yard, 1987

A Spring Rubbish Pile in the Nearby Yard, 1987
Oil on canvas. 189.5 x 199.5 cm. (74 5/8 x 78 1/2 in).   Initialed and dated ‘S.F. 87 [in Cyrillic]’ lower right; signed, titled, dated and numbered ‘S.FAIBISOVICH, A SPRING RUBBISH PILE IN THE NEARBY YARD 1987 N.1 [in Cyrillic]’ on the reverse.

 New York, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Direct from Moscow, 6 - 30 May, 1987

 Published by Regina Gallery, Semion Faibisovich : Painting From the 1980s, Moscow, 2001, p. 98 (illustrated)

 Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York

Faibisovich was inspired by the poor and casual sides of the soviet reality. Once when the snow just melted he came out into the street and saw this pile of rubbish. He was mesmerized by its simple beauty and painted three theme-related works. The Spring Rubbish #1 created in 1985 is his favorite: ‘...it is all shining. I showed it here just one time – and it was taken away. It was 1987, Perestroika – perhaps the anticipation and hopes made it partly so light.’   His art lives in an open time. This makes it possible to place it in a historical tradition: above all, in the tradition of the Moscow underground. It is clear to any connoisseur that, in the historical perspective of Moscow art, Faibisovich’s painting clearly echoes the cathartic staging of the symbolic by the Moscow artists of the sixties. The name which comes immediately to mind is, of course, that of Oscar Rabin, the singer of Garbage Dump #8, Passport, Ruble, The newspaper Pravda, and other subjects that were considered ‘unworthy of high art.’ On the one hand, Faibisovich depicted similar subjects (for example, Garbage Dump Next Door (1987, Fig. 60) with a fragment of the newspaper Izvesiya in the centre of the first part). Yet what is much more important is his employment (rare in Moscow art) of the esthetical symbolism of the vision of the world and the inclusion of this vision in the problematics of his art and painting. Y. Barabanov, ‘Analysis of the unidentified’ in Semion Faibisovich: Painting from the 1980s, Regina Gallery, Moscow, 2001, p. 26