Lot 28: Nikolai Andreevich Tyrsa , 1887-1942 Seated nude oil on canvas

signed and titled in Cyrillic and dated 1935 on the reverse oil on canvas

76 by 59.5cm., 30 by 23 1/2 in.

Leningrad, Exhibition to Mark the Centenary of Nikolai Andreevich Tyrsa's Birth, 1987

Exhibition Catalogue, Exhibition to Mark the Centenary of Nikolai Andreevich Tyrsa's Birth, Leningrad, 1987, listed under works for 1935, illustrated pl.5

The collection of B.D. Suris, Leningrad

A graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts and student of Leon Bakst, Nikolai Tyrsa's early influences were those of the World of Art movement and in 1915 he participated in two of the group's exhibitions in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. In the years before the revolution Tyrsa rose to prominence for his drawings in the Russian art journal Apollon, and later in the 1920s became a pioneering illustrator of Soviet children's books.

Tyrsa turned to oil painting comparatively late, in the 1930s. He is best known for his nudes, executed in a vivid and colourful palette which infuses them with a great optimism despite the fact that they were painted in a period of extreme hardship. Dating from 1935, the offered lot is an important and typical composition of that time.

In the beginning of 1942 Tyrsa was evacuated from a besieged Leningrad to Vologda, only to die there shortly after. His works are represented in important Russian national collections such as the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg and the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.