Lot 374: - Semyon Faibisovich , b. 1949 The Vodka Line series oil on canvas

signed with the artist's initials in Cyrillic and dated 90; signed, titled and dated 1990 on the reverse oil on canvas

188 by 284.5cm.; 74 by 112in.

Semyon Faibisovich,Ed.,Semyon Faibisovich: Art of the 1980s, Moscow 2001, p. 31, illustrated in colour

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

One of Russia's "Dissident painters" who worked outside of the official state controlled Soviet artistic system, Semyon Faibisovich is today regarded as one of Russia's most influential and acclaimed contemporary artists. "Semyon Faibisovich has a special role in the development of contemporary Russian art, for he was one of the first to use, along with a photo reporter's emotional distance, those techniques of American photorealism that were so popular in the US in the 1960s." (Time Magazine, 1989) Renowned for his sharp, ironic style of painting and the gritty realism of his motifs, his work depicts the paradoxes of Russia's newly-born democracy and the metamorphoses underway in the political, social and everyday urban life. Originally a student of the Moscow Institute of Architecture, Faibisovich turned to painting in 1978 after seeing the work of the Photorealist artist Richard Estes at an American Art exhibition held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Like Estes' photorealist paintings of New York's streetlife which immortalised the ordinary and the everyday, Faibisovich's paintings similarly depict unembellished Soviet scenes; scenes which he would photograph on his daily bus journeys between the subway and his home. The proximity of his paintings to a contemporary, photographic existence projected onto canvas begs comparison to Gerhard Richter's grisaille photo-based paintings of the 1960s; works which took their inspiration from a variety of low art sources such as family photo albums and the mass media. Faibosovich's The Vodka Line similarly tackles a non-artistic subject and is executed with the impartiality of a photo journalist using a muted colour palette consistent with the main body of his work. Although depicting a past epoch, The Vodka Line has a timeless relevance to it. The atmospheric quality draws the viewer into the painting to the extent where he feels as if part of the scene in motion. Despite the contemporary subject matter of Faibisovich's art, its roots are firmly planted in the traditions of Russian nineteenth-century realism with its matter-of-fact as opposed to analytical, portrayal of existence, finding "the aesthetic in the non-aesthetic and beauty in the banality of everyday life." (Time Magazine, 1989)