Lot 85: * BOGOMAZOV, ALEKSANDR (1880-1930) - Composition with a Black Triangle

* BOGOMAZOV, ALEKSANDR (1880-1930)
Composition with a Black Triangle
, signed with initials and dated 1916.
Oil on canvas, 52.5 by 52.5 cm.

Inscribed in Cyrillic with an authentication by the artist's wife Vanda Bogomazova and dated 1979.



Provenance: Estate of the artist.

Acquired directly from the widow of the artist by the previous owner.

Private collection, Europe.



Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the experts D. Sarabianov and A. Sarabianov.

Authenticity of the work has also been confirmed by the expert M. Krasilin.

Authenticity of the work has also been confirmed by the experts M. Valyaeva and I. Lomize.

Authenticity of the work has also been confirmed by the expert Yu. Rybakova.

This work by Aleksandr Bogomazov is one of the rare examples of the artist's mature Cubo-Futurist period. Painted in 1916, his Composition with a Black Triangle became the creative embodiment of his theoretical principles of painting. Between 1913 and 1915 Bogomazov was busy working on his treatise Painting and Its Elements, the most important theoretical work produced by the artist and quite possibly by the entire Cubo-Futurist movement in Russia.





Without actually publishing this treatise in his lifetime, Bogomazov nonetheless put into practice the principles of painting that he had developed. He believed that an artistic image should not correspond to an actual object, but should be the product of the artist's interpretation and creative feelings. Bogomazov's primary aim was to

convey the emotional mood evoked by the object being depicted.





Having set out a detailed methodology for creating works of art in his treatise, Bogomazov strove for perfection in practice. Composition with a Black Triangle is one example of the experiments he undertook. The graphic arrangement of the painting is imbued with rhythms - in terms of colour, line and texture - that generate the inner motion of the composition. The non-figurative Cubo-Futurist composition is deliberately without a distinguishable top or bottom. Dynamism is imparted to the textured painting by aggressive brushstrokes and the combination of various geometric forms straining in different directions. The artist managed to capture energy on the canvas with the aid of his brush and endow it with huge artistic temperament. This approach to organising a painted surface, as well as vibrant contrasting dark blue, lilac and green hues, is characteristic of Bogomazov's creative work in the mid-1910s.





In Kiev of the 1910s Cubo-Futurist works elicited an ambivalent reception from critics, and in 1915 Bogomazov decided to move to the Caucasus, to the village of Goris, which is where Composition with a Black Triangle was painted.

While teaching drawing at the local school, the artist continued working on his theoretical treatise and pursuing his painting far away from civilisation, drawing inspiration from the exotic climes of the Caucasus. Despite his financial difficulties and life in Goris being far from simple, Bogomazov would share in letters to his wife Vanda Bogomazova (née Monastyrskaya) his vivid impressions of the landscape and his aesthetic observations.





The works of his Caucasian period came to represent the next stage in Aleksandr Bogomazov's artistic career. As distinct from his early work, his creative output in the years 1915 to 1916 is more abstract and experimental. While visiting her husband in the Caucasus in 1916, Vanda Bogomazova wrote: "The scintillating colours in his

new paintings are much more vivid and crystalline than in his previous work".





Composition with a Black Triangle is among the last of Alexandr Bogomazov's Cubo-Futurist works, for soon after his return to Kiev in 1917 he was already concentrating on his teaching, and also engaging in agitprop art. Paintings by

Bogomazov are very rarely encountered on the market and this work will certainly make a valuable addition to even the finest collection, as a shining example of the

epoch of the experimental avant-garde.