Essay: "From the author" by Valery Turchin
Pages: 320
Language: English
Published:  Autumn, 2009

From the publisher.

The publication of a second book within two years (the first being MASTERS... The Power of Will and Imagination (2007), is a joint project reflecting a certain coincidence of tastes — tastes shared by Professor Valery Turchin, the publisher, and a group of Russian collectors, who have been collaborating with our gallery during the last ten years. Here a little background is required…the Moscow gallery “London Contemporary Art-EEB, Inc.” which began its activities within the Russian art-scene in 1999, was setting itself the task of popularizing high-class seriographs from the leading publishers of the same name in London. At the same time the creative endeavour of the publisher was the continued collaboration, which had started back at the beginning of the 1990s, with the artists Dmitry Plavinsky, Yuri Kuper, Rustam Khamdamov, Mihail Chemiakin, and also with the Croatian painter, M. Berber. The small group of collectors (who did not even regard themselves as collectors) gradually began to become closely associated with our gallery. Having started out by buying decorative serio - graphs, they soon acquired a genuine interest in more complex figurative paintings by Russian artists, and naturally the range of the latter was much broader than that of the names listed above. Being an art dealer, which has been this publisher’s special interest for almost two decades, requires without doubt that he have firm convictions, when it comes to his own tastes and predilections. Outward expression of those predilections (organization of exhibitions, publication of catalogues and so on) is a costly and extremely risk-prone business. No less important, though, is the ability to listen to and understand the wishes and aesthetic partialities of partners, i.e. those art-lovers, who, after first entering the gallery, stay on with it for long years to come. In view of the above this publisher had to assume the role of consultant when certain collections were first being put together, which then took shape under the influence of the work of this gallery. In this connection I should like to express my gratitude to Valery Turchin for the helpful conversations which I have had with him on several occasions over the last decade. They proved most enlightening. These last ten years have been far from straightforward as regards the development of the art market within Russia. It is precisely during this period, however, that Russian art-lovers have begun to take a serious interest in their own country’s artists of the 20th century. At the same time the appearance within this period digital printing (“Iris”, “Giclee”) has led to the virtual disappearance of original artist’s prints (etchings, lithographs, seriographs), which has had an extremely negative impact on the international art market. This I am obliged to recognize with regret, since I have always remained an admirer of original graphic works. There have also been some sad occasions in our world of late: including the recent death of Naum Olev (known to his friends as Nol), who had been one of the first gallery-owners in post- Soviet Russia. He had been a well-known poet, a man known for his broad intelligence and subtle irony. Apart from his activities as a gallery-owner at a time when hardly anyone in Russia knew what that involved, he possessed another rare quality—he was fond of artists. May our Nol rest in peace — a man of blessed memory. In short, the collection presented in this volume was assembled with the support of consultations from the publisher and incorporates works acquired by a number of Russian collectors, including the publisher himself. We hope that art-lovers will enjoy not only another encounter with the works of Dmitry Plavinsky, Oleg Tselkov, Yuri Kuper, Oscar Rabin, Natalya Nesterova, Tatyana Nazarenko and other remarkable artists, but also the chance to acquaint themselves in detail with some artists less wellknown to the wide public in Russia: Lev Meshberg, Lucien Dulfan, Igor Tiul’panoff, Mikhail Odnoralov and also another splendid artist living in Russia — Larissa Naumova. In our opinion the presentation of works by Vasily Shulzhenko here is of interest and also that of those by Sergey Sherstiuk, such a promising artist and lost to us so prematurely. We hope that after reading this book, it will become clear that announcements of the imminent demise of figurative art have been somewhat premature.

 Igor Metelitsin

"IGM Gallery,Inc"(USA)

Igor Metelitsin Gallery(Russia)