COLLECTION RED -
Special thanks to Will Awad, Simon Geoghegan and all the artists that joined Collection Red and made this project happen. Design by Anna Mryga
Elvira Pyrkova, Strolling through Ancient Moscow, Oil, Canvas, 90 x 105, 1996
All pictures are offered for sale, subject to availability. Our fair schedule may mean that some pictures are not on view in the Gallery. It will be assumed that all transactions will be in sterling unless otherwise agreed. Our catalogue notes are occasionally abbreviated, due to lack of space. Further information is usually available on request or on our website.
Front Cover: Bato Dugarzhapov, St. Sretensky Monastery, Gorokhovetz, Oil, Canvas on Board, 45 x 63, 2012
Evgeny Dobrenko
Russian art of the twentieth century was rich with differing movements and trends, many of which have entered the broader history of art worldwide. They were not only diverse, but often sharply polemical. Their radical aesthetic designs and audacious artistic manifestoes continue to seize the contemporary imagination. The Soviet epoch represents a major chapter in the history of Russian art, which therefore extends to include the art of the former Soviet republics. When considering Russian art history in its entirety, one is thus struck not so much by its radicalism as by its variety. Time, it has long been said, not only smooths over the cracks but also polishes the surface, giving a sheen of stylistic refinement. In accentuating the singularity of each artistic trend, time makes art history more vivid. All the artists assembled by Collection Red were born and educated in the republics of the Soviet Union. Their works bear the hallmark of their own national schools, but these geographical differences are secondary to the group’s shared history and, more specifically, its shared emotional experience of a historical narrative which has been cut short. Collection Red is the history of twentieth century art as realised today; the history of art which chooses not to subject itself to the rules of time and history, to become the past. This is no post-modernist pastiche. On the contrary, it is art which refuses to play about with styles. The absence of play is compensated by harmony. Looking at these pieces, moving from one artist to another, one realises that their work does not simply give a second life to those movements, styles and themes which defined the art of the twentieth century. In fact, their work does not recognise any such historical limitation. In this age of uncertainty, repetition and nostalgia, when the world is gripped by a sense of drift and detachment, of longing for an older dynamism, this group of artists renounces contemporary trends and builds its aesthetic utopia in the present. This is the hallmark of true art.
Jurij Grigorovic Jurij was born in 1962 in Kustanaj Kazakhstan. In 1984 Jurij began studying at the All-Russia State Insitute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow with ambitions of entering the film industry. He qualified in 1990 as a Film Set Designer. By this time his work had already appeared in four major exhibitions. In 1990 Jurij relocated to Lithuania where he began to enjoy increasing success. His paintings appeared in many international exhibitions. In 1996 Jurij's work was awarded third prize at an exhibition in the Design Museum, London. To date Jurij has designed sets for 19 films and has continued his career as a painter. His work has now appeared in thirty exhibitions, including 13 solo shows, in Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Germany, the United States, France, the UK, Sweden, Finland, Holland, Morocco, Belarus and Poland.
African Motives. Oil, Canvas, 70 x 100, 2009
“The Town of Tomcat Murr” is based on a fantasy world of Hoffman’s Fairytale character Tomcat Murr - a lovable, self-taught feline who has written his own autobiography full of observation of people. Murr is a confident scholar, a lover, a carouser and a brawler who’s story was accidentally mixed and interwoven with a book about the moody, hypochondriac genius composer Johannes Kreisler. Jurij Grigorovic created this fantasy town through the eyes of this wonderful cat.
The Town of Tomcat Murr, Oil, Canvas. 60 x 80, 2011
Elvira Pyrkova Elvira Pyrkova is a Russian artist, costume designer and portraitist; she lives in the United Kingdom. She was born in Arzamas, Nizhni Novgorod, Russia and was chosen to study at the Moscow Central Art School located in the National Tretyakov Gallery, part of the Vassily Surikov Academic Art Institute in Moscow where she graduated from in 1988. At Surikov she studied under Alexander Smirnoff, Natalya Bereznaya and Serguei Andreyaca, founder of the Sergien Andreyaca National Watercoulour Gallery. In 1988 she joined the All-Russia State Institute of Cinematography where she studied Costume Design under veteran Soviet costume designer Olga Kruchinina. She graduated with honours in 1994 from this MFA program and then moved to Mexico, where she lived and worked for eight years. She has exhibited regularly in urbs like Mexico City, Guanajuato and Monterrey. Sylvia Ozerkovsky’s Galeria Morandi and Galeria Lourdes Chumacero sell her work in Mexico City. Incidentally, hers was the only entry by a foreign artist in the book Huella entre Milenios which highlighted the work of modern Mexican artists of the turn of the century, like Martha Chapa and Jose Luis Cuevas. In 2002 she moved to the United Kingdom. Since then her work has been twice short-listed for the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists’ Prize and once for the Garrick-Milne Prize. The painting short-listed for the latter prize was exhibited and sold at Christie’s London. Later, two of her paintings were selected to be part of the exhibition The Art of Love, which took place at the OXO Tower in London. She was commissioned in 2004 to paint the portraits Girls from Odessa, Oil, Canvas, 60 x 50, 2008 of Saints George, David, Patrick and Andrew for the Erdington Abbey Church of Saints Thomas and Edmund of Canterbury; in 2005 she had a personal exhibition at the Birmingham & Midlands Institute organized by the British-Russian Society. Her work, through Arte Lia Gallery, was featured in the Russian and Oriental Art Fair 2010 in London,
the Windsor Contemporary Art Fair 2010 and the Edinburgh Art Fair 2010; likewise, at the Art Deco Fair in Alwoodley, Leeds, and at the Sheffield Art Fair 2011. More than thirty of her paintings were exhibited, through Modina Art Gallery, along with the work of other Russian artists, in the exhibition Revelations at Zellig Centre in Birmingham as well as at the Manchester Buy Art Fair 2011, 20/21 International Art Fair, London, January 2012 and the The Great Sheffield Art Show, July 2012. More recently: A collection of her Russian theme paintings was exhibited at the Leeds Slavic Bazaar Festival as well as a collection of her portraits that resulted in a number of commissions by festival attendees. As a special guest at the 2012 Chinese New Year Celebrations in Leeds Town Hall a selection of her paintings was featured. For the last four years she has contributed paintings for the St Gemma’s Hospice Art Exhibition charity in Leeds. In June she was artist of the month at Aberford Gallery in West Yorkshire and a number of her works are still exhibited on sale in this gallery. Through Aberford Gallery she has actively continued obtaining commissions for portraits which heretofore she had done successfully in Moscow, Monterrey and Mexico City.
Glamour Ladies of the 20's, Oil, Canvas, 100 x 80. 2006
“This young artist’s work dialectically unfolds from nature to geometry and back to nature again, accurately experimenting with cultural influences and revelations from her trips and life experience, and also from the voyage which began in her native Russia and ended in Mexico. Her expression transmits a need for organizing disperse appearances under shapes which crystallize an ideal and poetical vision of the world that surrounds her.” - Berta Taracena*
Her work in the UK is sold through Arte Lia in London, Modina Art Gallery in Birmingham, James Fine Art in Cheltenham and Hillier Gallery of Stratford-uponAvon. She is one of a select group of Russian trained artists exhibiting through Collection Red, the London virtual gallery Her work in the United States is sold through Kew Gallery in New York City. Paintings from twenty-five years as an artist are part of private collections in Russia, Mexico, Canada, the United States and Great Britain.
*Artistas plásticos: huella entre milenios / [edit.] Agnes del Conde. - México, D.F.: Ediciones Gráficas, 1999. - 143 p., ill. - ISBN 968-5186-00-6 UFSIA: MAG-MEX-C 1299
Hrayr Karapetian
Hrayr Karapetian was born in 1930 in Maykop, Krasnodar region, USSR. After his family moved to Armenia in 1945 he went to study at the Terlemezian Art College and graduated from it in 1954. In 1955 Hrayr has successfully passed the entrance exams to the All-Russia State Insitute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow and graduated from there in 1961 as a Film Set Designer. From 1961 to 1990 he worked at the Erevan Film Studios "Armenfilm" as a set designer and did the design work for over 20 feature films. Hrayr is a member of The Union of Artists from 1967. His paintings were exhibited in Armenia, Russia and abroad. One of the canvases "Unsettled" is on a permanent exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in London.
1968 - Graphic works from the series "Land" (triptych) Germany (GDR), 1972 - took part in 36th Biennale exhibition "Bienam" in Venice (Italy); series "Human Being", "Peace", "Labour", "War". From 1971 to 1993 he taught at the Theatre Institute (Art Faculty) and the Art College in Erevan, Armenia. Since 1993 Hrayr lives and works in London, UK. He took part in many notable exhibitions in Leon, France such as "Grand Salon Palais" in 2009 and at the Armenian Cultural Centre in London, 2012. Left: Love Spring. Life Long Road, Oil, Canvas, 55 x 70 Right: The Unsettled, Oil, Canvas, 82 x 67
Gallah Abdel Fattah Gallah’s parents are Egyptian, who by an absolutely free choice decided to move to Russia where in 1970 Gallah was born. In 1988 Gallah graduated from the Moscow Art School and in 1994 from the Surikov State Art College. Having been brought up in Russia with its traditional values of Russian fine arts Gallah combines the harmony of ancient Russian icon painting and Egyptian symbolism, their graphic finesse. Gallah Abdel Fattah’s works can be found in private collections in Germany, Egypt, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.
Below: Sisterly Conversation, Oil, Canvas, 140 x 140, 1993 Right: Shaman, Oil, Canvas, 120 x 100, 2002
Bato Dugarzhapov Bato Dugarzhapov was born in 1966 in the village Duldurga in the Chita Region or Siberia. From 1978 to 1984 he studied at the Thomsky Special Art School attached to the Surikov State Art Institute in Moscow. Two years later he joined the Monumental Art Department at the Surikov Institute and graduated from there in 1992. Since then Bato has held over 40 exhibitions, almost 20 of them being solo shows, including such prestigious and fashionable Moscow Art Fairs as Art Yar, Amadeus Gallery, Art-Arsenal and others. For a number of years Bato proudly participated in decorating the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. He has been a member of the Union of Russian Artists since1998. In 1999 Bato took part in the “The World of Colours” exhibition in Italy, Milan, Cremona. In the same year Bato won a grant to study at “The Sieve de Art” France where he studied for a year. Bato’s works have been purchased by private collectors in Russia, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan, Cyprus and Yugoslavia. Bato’s paintings are striking with their light attitude towards life, their style and colouring. The unique beauty and harmony of colours, and brilliant rendering of light make Bato’s paintings A Day for the Midges. Oil, Canvas, 80 x 90, 2012 exciting and charming.
Left: Morning, Oil, Canvas on Board, 40 x 30, 2012 Right: Sunny Bizerta, Oil, Canvas on Board, 40 x 45, 2012
Oksana Dvornikova-Sanson
Oksana Dvornikova-Sanson was born in Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals. At the age of 5 she started her artistic training at a special Art School and continued four years later at the State Academy of Culture and Arts. After 8 intensive years of study Oksana successfully gained employment as a chief designer at the local theatre as well as in television; she has exhibited her work at the local Art Fairs where her harmonious and colourful paintings have been awarded numerous prizes. In 2000 she moved to Valognes in France where over the following 12 years her talent developed and matured. Her art is enjoying great success in the regional galleries there. She also has her own studio where she teaches children and adults.
The most recent significant event in her artistic life was the unveiling of her painting at the beatification of Father Pierre-Adrien Toulorge (1757-1793) on Sunday 29 April 2012 in the diocese of Coutances, France. Oksana’s paintings are owned by American, British and Japanese art collectors. Left: Flamenco in White, Acrylic, Canvas, 162 x 130 Right: Taxi in the Rain, Acrylic, Canvas, 70 x 70
Ajdyn Lazimow
Ajdyn was born in 1956 in Baku, Azerbaijan. He obtained a degree in art from the State Art College, Baku in 1980. Ajdyn worked extensively at the Baku Film Studios where he assisted in the production design of the popular Azerbaijani film Nizami which was awarded a prize at the 1984 World Film Festival in Tashkent. In 1986 Ajdyn began studying at the VGIK, All-Russia State Insitute of Cinematography. He graduated from VGIK in 1990 as a Film Set Designer. Since 1994 Ajdyn has lived in worked in Warsaw, where he has continued his career in the film industry and as an animator. He has had solo exhibitions in Warsaw in 2003 and 2007.
Left: A Game of Chovgan, Oil, Canvas, 100 x 100, 2009 Right: Verandah, Oil, Cardboard, 40 x 50, 2008
Natalia Ryss
Natalia Ryss was born in 1968 in Rostov-on-Don. In 1988 she graduated from the Rostov Art College named after Grekov. In 1995 she graduated from the All-Russia State Insitute of Cinematography as an animation designer. She lives and works in Rostovon-Don, Russia. Natalia’s aesthetic views have been influenced by German Expressionism (the “Bridge” group). She has been exhibiting since 1997. From 1997 to 1999 she created a number of collages for the magazine “Chemistry and Life.” Natalia’s works are owned by private collectors in the USA, France, Switzerland, England, Germany, Canada and Russia. Natalia also works as an art house animation film director. Top Left: Monsters, Oil, Canvas 50 x 115, 1992 Top Right: Japanese Legend, Oil, Canvas, 90 x 115, 2003 Bottom Right: Peppers, Oil, Canvas, 29,5 x 42, 2009
OLGA GEOGHEGAN Olga Geoghegan (Yukhtina) was born in Ukhta in the far North of Russia in 1965. At the age of ten she was offered a place at the Leningrad Academy of Art’s special art school. On leaving school she immediately won a place at the prestigious Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Academy of Art where she began a lengthy, formal training in painting and theatrical decoration under Professor Kochergin, the Chief Artistic Designer at the Maly Theatre, St. Petersburg. She worked for a spell in the Kirov (Mariinsky) and Maly theatres as a Stage Designer before exhibiting throughout Europe. In 1998 she moved to London where she has participated in a number of joint and solo exhibitions. Her work has been shown at over 27 exhibitions around the world. Olga’s paintings can be found in private collections in the USA, Switzerland, Austria, UK, Spain and France.
Above: Red Still Life, Oil, Canvas, 100 x 80 Right: The Fish Bride, Oil, Canvas, 90 x 70
COLLECTION RED Tel: 07979 295 292 www.collectionred.co.uk info@collectionred.co.uk
Hrayr Karapetian, The Motherhood, Oil, Canvas, 66 x 56
Copyright @ Collection Red 2012