Lot 506: Leonid Lamm , I am Flying, 1973-1986

signed with artist's initials and dated 73-86 (lower right); inscribed Leonid Lamm "I am Flying" 1973-1986 from Seventh Heven Series (on the reverse) oil on canvas

measurements 39 7/8 by 29 7/8 in. alternate measurements 101.3 by 75.9 cm

Los Angeles, Richard/Bennett Gallery, Leonid Lamm: Seven Heaven , October-November, 1986
Los Angeles, International Contemporary Art Fair , 1987 and 1988
Los Angeles, Richard/Bennett Gallery, Salon des Indépendants , 1987
Downey, California, Downey Museum of Art, Soviet Émigré Artists , 1988
New York, Hall Bromm Gallery, Soviet & American Artists , 1989
Washington D.C., Fondo Del Sol Visual Arts and Media Center, Leonid Lamm , 1989
Rye, New York, Rye Arts Center, From Chaos to Creation: Russian Art 1972-1992 , 1993
Baltimore, Evergreen House Museum of Johns Hopkins University, January-March, 1994
New York, Hall Bromm Gallery, Four Russian Messages: Carnival or Drama? , 1994
New Canaan, Connecticut, Silvermine Guild Arts Centre, Leonid Lamm , 2001

Private collection, Toronto (acquired directly from the artist)

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

Leonid Lamm was initially enrolled at the Moscow Institute of Architecture in 1944, where he studied with Iakov Chernikhov, the famed Russian avant-garde architect of the 1920s. Lamm was expelled in 1947 for his association with a dissident group of young mathematicians from Moscow State University. He then went on to work as an architect for different organizations. In 1949, he entered the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, graduating in 1954. He became the chief art director of the publishing house in Saratov and a year later returned to Moscow, where he resumed his work as an architect. Lamm joined the Artists' Union in 1964, and began his career as a successful illustrator for various publishing houses. By 1957, Lamm had become friendly with several activist painters: Ãoelo Sooster, who had recently been discharged from a prison camp, and Yurii Sobolev, who had been jailed for his dissident activities. That same year, Lamm attended the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students held in Moscow, and was particularly impressed with the Western modernist art exhibited there.

Lamm has painted in styles ranging from realistic to surrealistic and abstract. He has created complex assemblages, abstract compositions in a Suprematist mode, and works that employ biomorphic shapes or relate to his interest in the teachings of the Kabbalah. After his arrest in 1973, he continued his artistic work in jail, creating watercolors and sketches realistically depicting the routine of incarcerated life.

Lamm was released from prison in 1976 and immigrated to the United States in 1982, settling in New York. Lamm transferred many of his works done in prison onto canvases, creating large-scale paintings with strong political content. His compositions often include mathematical equations and measurements, which refer to the tendency of contemporary societies to control and standardize life.

The first version of Lamm's I Am Flying, the most important work from the Seventh Heaven series (1973-86), was executed in oil pastel in 1973, while the artist was preparing for his emigration from the Soviet Union. Lamm has said that the theme of the series--created in anticipation of his new life in the West, which was then both unknown and intriguing to the artist--was inspired by his thoughts and feelings regarding his allegorical flight to what he regarded as the world of hope (the West). "Seventh heaven" is a metaphorical height that Lamm's predecessors, in their hopeless dreams about utopia, were trying to capture and achieve. As a result of Lamm's desire to leave the Soviet Union, the artist was arrested and later sent to a labor camp in November of 1973.

I Am Flying, together with all the other works from the Seventh Heaven series, was first exhibited by the artistÂ?s wife, Innessa Levkova-Lamm, on September 29, 1974, at the Second Open-Air Exhibition in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow. This showing of approximately two hundred experimental works by seventy artists had more than ten thousand visitors in a span of four hours. At the time of the exhibition, Lamm was in Butyrskaya prison. On September 30, 1974, New York Times journalist Hendrick Smith wrote a very positive review of the Izmailovsky Park exhibition. Smith hailed the event as "the biggest officially sanctioned show of modern and unorthodox art by Soviet painters since the avant-garde movement in this country in the nineteen-twenties." Smith also mentioned the details of Lamm's arrest. On October 23, 1974, the Soviet official newspaper Vecherniaia Moskva (Evening Moscow) published a very negative appraisal of the show by N. Rybalchenko, who singled out Lamm's work as an example of dissident art.

Lamm brought the Seventh Heaven series to New York in 1982. The noted collector Norton Dodge acquired a significant portion of the series, including the first version of I Am Flying, in 1986; these works now belong to the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art of the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.

Lamm completed the second version of the Seventh Heaven series while preparing for his solo exhibition at the Richard/Bennett Gallery in Los Angeles (October 10-November 10, 1986). This more recent version included a new version of I Am Flying, which was now enlarged and painted in oils. The euphoric flying figure--based on the artist's self-portrait--appears to be liberated, not only from the laws of gravity, but also from all social commitments. However, the work contains more than just autobiographical references, expressing both Lamm's own personal experiences as well as universal concepts of freedom. The exhibition at the Richard/Bennett Gallery was favorably reviewed in the Los Angeles Weekly (October 24-30, 1986) and the Los Angeles Times (November 7, 1986).