Lot 93: VALENTIN IVANOVICH KURDOV RUSSIAN, 1905-1989 ABSTRACT COMPOSITION

signed in Cyrillic and dated 1928 (lower right)

tempera on paper laid down on board

CATALOGUE NOTE

Valentin Ivanovich Kurdov was born into a family of considerable revolutionary democratic ideals. These circumstances led the artist to develop strong personal convictions and an all encompassing interest in creative discourse. Growing up in the region of Ural, Kurdov was drawn to visual representations of nature. His favorite book in childhood was a catalogue of works from The Russian Sate Museum, in St. Petersburg. In 1923, Kurdov moved there, in search of realizing his dream of attending the Academy of Fine Art. During the first years at the academy Professor Mikhail Matiushin greatly influenced Kurdov's comprehension of art. The country's post-Revolution condition triggered a wave of various artistic transformations - the art world took on political structuring in the early 1920s breaking a clear divide between the so called modern "left" and traditional "right" branches of artistic disciplines.

As a student, Kurdov was faced with the systems of symbolic perception and tryokhtsvetka (color range of blue green and red) of Petrov-Vodkin, the lessons of Malevich, and the influential work of Filonov and Kustodiev. Kurdov's fine art training entailed little structural definition of pedagogy. The suspicious alliances within the Academy instilled doubt in Kurdov, thus he was faced with finding his own key to the mysteries of pictorial representation. He was very drawn to the Russian avant-garde and its vast possibilities for discovery. In the late 1920s, Kurdov and his friend Yury Vasnetsov pleaded with Kasemir Malevich to let them join the Institute of Artistic Culture and he relented. The artists at the institute were kept in isolation from each other, to increase the momentum for self-discovery, thus eliminating the possibility of outside influences or opinions. Kurdov completed ten compositions during his time studying under Malevich, one of which being the present work Composition, The Contrasts of Materials. The painting is one of the rare and valuable renditions created by the artist in his unique derivative of the Cubist idiom.

Kurdov articulated his ideas in his memoir Memorable Days and Years (fig.1), "For the first time I was not thinking like an academic. To answer what I had wanted at the time was difficult. It was necessary to give myself the chance to find the solution to what that was that has been lurking in my subconscious. But I knew that the teaching of Matiushin no longer satisfied my interests or needs, and I yearned for something more. The idea of a "multiple perspective" melted the substance of the object that is so dear to me in all its uses: weight, texture and localized light." Kurdov did not want to blindly follow Malevich's theories of Suprematism, he longed to discover his own experience and come to his own conclusions. Indeed the present work introduces the means by which the artist finds a solution for incorporating cubist principles into an abstract composition.

One of the first objects that Kurdov brought to class was a piece of plaster flaked off the face of the Academy of Fine Arts. The student was enticed by its simplicity and texture, and he saw it as the perfect object for his composition. The Contrasts of Materials introduces a new pictorial language to the artist's oeuvre, that of strict geometric forms, complicated by rich texture inhabiting an ambiguous, mystifying space. The artist recalls the paintings of the period: "...the works that I created then reflect my thoughts at the time. I wanted for the objects that I had chosen for the cubist compositions to be unique to me. Contrary to foreign artists, I wanted to choose objects naturally predisposed for being depicted in a cubist manner."

In the year 2000, the State Russian Art Museum held a retrospective entitled In Malevich's Circle: Confederates, Students, Followers in Russia 1920s-50s. The exhibit included works by the artists taught by Malevich, Kurdov's novel renditions from the period were among those included.

24 by 38 in.<br><br>61 by 96.5 cm