Gene Shapiro, President of the eponymous American auction house specializing in Russian art, has announced that his company has moved to new premises in New York, located at 506 East 74th Street in the Upper East Side section of Manhattan. The inaugural auction will take place on June 15th, 2010, beginning at 12:00 PM EST. A full week of live preview begins on June 7th, and the catalog for the auction is already available online to view at http://www.geneshapiro.com. The auction house can also be reached at +1 (212) 717-7500 or [email protected].
‘I am very happy that we have been able to make this move,” says Shapiro, ‘as this has been something we have been wanting to do for a while but we were waiting for a great space to come onto the market.’ The new premises is conveniently located next to the intersection of 74th Street and York Avenue, which is only two blocks away from the location of Sotheby’s headquarters and auction premises. This will allow both buyers and sellers of Russian art to easily visit both companies on trips to New York.
In addition, Gene Shapiro Auctions, which currently holds two auctions a year dedicated to Russian art, will now be able to hold more auctions each year. Shapiro says the following about the new location, ‘While the former space we used in the Chelsea district of Manhattan was a beautiful space, it really limited the amount of time we could spend on exhibitions. This move allows us to have a convenient location for visitors from Russia and other countries to visit us at their leisure, as we will now have extended exhibition times and open office hours for visitors.” Indeed, the move to a permanent location for Gene Shapiro Auctions in New York is a positive sign for the Russian art market as a whole. For many knowledgeable collectors, America has long been an important source for Russian artworks, but the venues for acquiring them have been limited.
In favorable contrast, the June 15th Gene Shapiro auction is brimming with 19th and 20th Century Russian paintings and sculpture. Highlights of the auction include a powerful and stoic early landscape by Abraham Manievich (1881-1942) that has never before been at market and was consigned from the private collection of the artist’s family, as well as a large and vibrant Moscow-period painting by Oscar Rabin (B1928), which was acquired from the artist by Walter J. Stoessel in 1976, the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1974-1976. The time period of the paintings and sculptures in the auction goes from the 17th Century to the present day, including particularly strong collections of Russian bronzes, avant-garde works, theatrical costume designs and illustrations, modernist paintings by Russian artists who emigrated to the west (including Abraham Manievich, David Burliuk and Constantin Westchiloff, amongst many others), and contemporary art by famous artists of the 1960s-70s, and up to the present day.
Artists and sculptors whose works are included in the auction include Samuel Adlivankin, Evgeny Agafanov, Nikolai Akimov, Alexandre Altmann, Pyotr Belenok, Anatoly Belkin, Eugene Berman, Leonid Berman, Vasilii Bobrov, Kim Britov, Alexei Brovtsyn, Fedor Burkhardt, David Burliuk, Anatol Chechik, Mikhail Chemiakin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Makariy Domrachev, Andrei Egorov, Sergei Essaian, Nicolai Fechin, Leon Gaspard, Andrey Gennadiev, Sergei Gerasimov, Tatiana Glebova, Grigory Gluckmann, Natalia Goncharova, Eduard Gorokhovsky, Vasily Grachev, Alexis Gritchenko, Alexis Gritsai, Alessio Issupoff, Evgeny Izmailov, Vladimir Jedrinsky, Ilya Kabakov, Anatoly Kaplan, Vassyl Khmeluk, Gustav Klucis, Komar & Melamid, Gavril Kondratenko, Valery Koshlyakov, Yuriy Krasny, Boris Kustodiev, Pavel Kuznetsov, Evgeny Lanceray, André Lanskoy, Mikhail Larionov, Abraham Manievich, Lydia Masterkova, Vadim Meller, Lev Meshberg, Arsenii Meshersky, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, Sacha Moldovan, Vitaliy Mushketov, Evgeny Naps, Tatiana Nazarenko, Mykola Nedilko, Vladimir Nemukhin, Mikhail Nesterov, Natalia Nesterova, Alexander Ney, Boris Orlov, Pimen Orlov, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Boris Pastoukhoff, Lev Povzner, Oscar Rabin, Mikhail Roginsky, Dmitri Romanovsky, Pyotr Samonov, Georg Schlicht, Vladimir Serov, Simkha Simkhovitch, Vasily Sitnikov, Leonid Sokov, Boris Solotareff, Edward Steinberg, Vladimir Sterligov, Vincent Stiepevich, Constantin Stoiloff, Alexei Sundukov, Boris Sveshnikov, Arkadii Svischev, Mikhail Tarkhanov, Pavel Tchelitchew, Igor Tulpanov, Oleg Vassiliev, Wilhelm Velten, Vladimir Vetrogonsky, Sergei Vinogradov, Noi Volkov, Konstantin Vyalov, Constantin Westchiloff, Konstantin Yuon, Alexander Zakharov, and Alexander Zinoviev.
The auction will also feature numerous rare books, all related to Russian art and artists, including a 17th Century Russian Menaion that formerly belonged to the legendary nonconformist artist Vasily Sitnikov. Other books in the auction include a complete set of the influential early 20th Century arts journal “Zhar Ptitsa”, Bulgakov’s monograph on Vasily Verseschagin, Nevedomsky and Repin’s monograph on Arkhip Kuindzhi, the Legat Brother’s book of caricatures of Russian Ballet dancers, the 1899-1900 “Annual of the Imperial Theatres” (the only year in which Sergei Diaghilev participated in the publication), the 1924-25 “Revue Internationale des Arts du Théâtre” (with original pochoirs by Goncharova, deThomas and Lissim included), Konstantin Somov’s Le Livre de la Marquise, Alexandre and Cocteau’s monograph on Leon Bakst, and the 1927 Brentano’s monograph on Bakst.
Important examples of Russian decorative arts are included in the auction, including two 19th Century Russian porcelain vases made by the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, several silver miniature travel icons in triptych form, and an early Cretan icon of the Nativity. In addition, the auction includes many collections of lithographs and hand-colored engravings that were produced in the 19th century illustrating Russian military uniforms, standards, and insignia, as well as André Durand’s views of Russia from his “Excursion pittoresque et archéologique en Russie par le Hâvre, Hambourg, Lubeck, Saint-Petersbourg, Moscou, Nijni-Novgorod, Yaroslaw et Kasan” published from 1842-1848.
To make the auction even more interesting for the collector or Russian art, rounding out the sale are more than 20 original early Soviet posters, including sought-after examples by Viktor Deni, Konstantin Eliseev, Roman Gershanik, Mikhail Kupryanov, Dmitri Moor, Grigory Roze, P.G. Sergeev, Valery Surianinov, and Nikolai Valerianov.