Lily Balasanova and Serge Klevtikh are an artist duo from Moscow, Russia renown for their mixed media works of heavily populated urban areas.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
Both of the artists studied together in college at the Moscow Academy of Textiles. Balasanova and Kolevatykh both earned M.F.A.s in 1984.
The duo also served as artists in residence in the Netherlands.
The duo have had works placed in private and corporate collections in Russian and United States.
Though the duo creates wonderful abstract works the designs and finished products of the this pair are remarkable. They touch several styles of art including Op Art, Pop Art, and Surrealism. Their urban landscapes even have a sculptural feel to them.
Serge Poliakoff was a Russian born French painter renown for his modernist style. Serge Poliakoff was born in Moscow, Russia in the year 1900. The artist was the thirteenth of fourteenth children. His father bred horses for the army so his family was well off financially.
Poliakoff briefly attended the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpting before dropping out and moving to Constantinople. He was able to earn good money as a musician.
As a musician his specialty was the guitar. Poliakoff played a uniquely shaped guitar called the balalaika.
In 1923, the artist moved to Paris, France.
In 1962, the artist became a French citizen.
Below a montage of works by Poliakoff set to music:
The artist was not only a great painter, but later in his career became taken with ceramics.
Poliakoff passed away in 1969.
Price range information: Works range from lithograph prints and etchings starting at $8,000 to original oils which can reach $800,000. Works in gouache range from $10,000 to $140,000.
Pavel Pukhov or Pavel 183 was a wonderful street artist from Russia who critics called the next Banksy. Pavel was born in the year 1983 in Moscow, Russia. The artist kept his government identity a secret, but did share that he had a communications degree. For his design style P183 was known to render in black and white and enjoyed working with the eyes the most.
Pukhov was great at putting street art in public places and waterways with several works having just eyes peering out from under bushes or shrubs.
Sometimes the artist would even use fire in his artwork.
His most famous work is probably the glasses made using a streetpost as one side of the glasses. The work was made in the snow but shows a remarkable sense of creativity.
He was signed to a theater production company to help with designing sets. This company actually announced that P183 had died at the age of 29 years old of unknown causes. This was in April of 2013.
In addition to painting P183 occasionally worked in three dimensions.
In this clip we see a great montage of works by Pavel P183:
On June 5 at Sotheby’s auction house of London a set of 18 photographs of Moscow taken by a former circus chimpanzee sold for $76,000. The chimp’s name is Mikki.
The idea was dreamed up by two Russian born American artists. One is named Vitaly Komar. Some examples of his work below.
The other artist involved is named Alexander Melamid. Melamid has a son that produces videos for hip hop moguls like Kanye West and Snoop Dogg. Melamid took the liberty to produce oils paintings of these two icons. Melamid is not only a great photographer, but a great painter also.
The pair found the chimp while visiting a circus in Moscow. The duo have done many collaborations with animals in the past including making bones by using the paw prints of dogs, using an elephant to paint a bust of George Washington, and even working with beavers producing wood gnawed sculptures.
Below is a clip from the CBS morning show with more about the auction.
What a fantastic and unique idea! Way to go Mr. Komar and Mr. Melamid!
Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most celebrated artists to come from Russia during the early 1900s. Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia in the year 1866. He is the first artist given credit for creating works that were entirely abstract. Kandinsky did a fair amount of landscapes as well, but is considered by many art historians to be the first creator of abstractions.
Price range info: Kandinsky worked in many mediums. The cheapest works are lithographs and woodcuts which start at a couple of hundred dollars all the way up to $25,000. Oil painting record is $ 8.93 million. Most watercolors are going for few hundred thousand dollars to $1.89 million.
A great clip here! Watch Kandinsky work on a drawing.
In this montage see some excellent Kandinsky landscapes as well as his standard abstract expression paintings.
For his art education he attended the University of Moscow where he studied law and economics. He didn’t really start to work on painting and drawing until the age of thirty. In 1896 Kandinsky moved to Munich, Germany. Kandinsky studied under Anton Azbe. Azbe went on to teach many Russian Impressionist artists.
Kandinsky started out painting landscapes packed with emotion. He wasn’t accepted to art school right away and before going to study, Kandinsky saw an exhibition by Claude Monet. Kandinsky was taken with Monet’s painting of haystacks. He loved the way the artist painted the haystack without being stuck to the idea of painting an object. The haystacks were reduced to simple fields of color.
The most significant artwork produced by Kandinsky during this time probably was the Blue Rider made in 1903. A horse rider that is blue, casts a blue shadow. Its a nod to the viewer of the path the artist is taking. A landscape was compared to music by Kandinsky. His works during this expressionistic stae were sometimes quite large. He travelled through much of Europe during this stage. A painting showing much more abstraction from this era is called Blue Mountain. There isn’t a dominant color. The artist isn’t trying to create depth on the picture plane, he relied on flat surfaces and painted each color without regard to what was next to it.
Moved back to Russia after beginning of the first world war. Kandinsky didn’t like the theories of art given by his government so in 1921 he moved to Germany. He was a professor at an art school that was eventually closed by the Nazis in 1933. The Bauhaus School was where the artist was able to teach his theories and develop his idea of abtract art that was frowned upon in his native Russia.
Kandinsky then relocated to France becoming a French citizen in 1939. He combined all of his knowledge and made some wonderful paintings with fun geometric and organic shapes set against a black background.
Wassily Kandinsky died in 1944 at the age of 77.
Kandinsky is thought to be the founder of abstraction. I would compare most of his works to the abstract works of the watercolorist John Salminem. Salminem is known for his paintings of urban street scenes, but also has a wonderful DVD out on painting organized abstract art. You have abstract art like Jackson Pollack, that is very loose and free flowing. Then you have abstract art like Kandinsky, abstract but organized. Kandinsky’s work also reminds me of Rex Ray’s works.
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