Lot 63: YEFIM LADIZHENSKI (1911-1982) ‘The evening news’ [ ( )

YEFIM LADIZHENSKI (1911-1982) ‘The evening news’ [ ( )] signed in Cyrillic (lower right) tempera on canvas 90 x 100cm (35 7/16 x 39 3/8in). "

Provenance The family of the artist Literature "Y.B. Ladizhenski/ Odessa of My Youth, Printiv, Israel, 2010, p.13," illustrated and cover illustration "The artistic legacy of Yefim Ladizhenski (1911-1982) is interesting, complex" and challenging. The five works presented here from the series ‘Odessa of My Youth’ illustrate that the concept behind the series was multi-faceted. "A tortured, brilliant man, Ladizhenski was preoccupied with the idea of" place as both a physical and spiritual home and this quest is borne out in his oeuvre. "Born in Odessa in 1911, Ladizhenski grew up in a city rich with the colours" of bright flowers and abundant food. Even after the Revolution diminished "the many superficial delights of the city, Ladizhenski remembers the" best aspects of Odessa living on in the citizens of that special place: the "characters, the stories and the things people taught him were all important" and needed to be preserved. "When Ladizhenski left Odessa in 1931, having graduated that year from" "the Odessa Art School, he pursued a successful career in stage design" and became a member of the Soviet Artists’ Union in 1939. Between 1959 "and 1961, Ladizhenski designed two pavilions at the All-Union Agricultural" Exhibition in Moscow and in 1962 a one-man show showcasing thirty years of work was held at the Soviet Theatrical Society in Moscow. "From 1968, the theme of Odessa started to preoccupy the artist and he" began to work on the ‘Odessa of My Youth’ series. This was a pivotal stage in Ladizhenski’s artistic career because the paintings were not in the prescribed Soviet genre of realism and it marked a departure from the "official art he had spent so much of his career creating. In the series, the" artist depicts Odessa as though through a prism; figures and buildings are occasionally flattened and the viewer is given what would almost appear to "be an aerial view of the scene. This distortion of perspective, superficially in" "the primitive style, is deceptive but intentional and Ladizhenski employs the" technique as a means of evoking nostalgia for a bygone age. The paintings are colourful and beguiling and even the melancholy scenes are possessed "of a vivacity. Everything is laid out as in a ‘shop window’ [Josef Leschinskiy," "foreword to Y.B. Ladizhenski/ Odessa of My Youth, Printiv, Israel, 2010," p.11] so that the viewer is enticed into a world which the artsit believes was so unique that it had to be mythologised. "When he emigrated to Israel in 1978, the vast majority of Ladizhenski’s" works – approximately 2000 paintings – were destroyed when the payment of the customs tax could not be met. This was not just a materail loss for "the artist but a spiritual one as well. Without his body of work, Ladizhenski" felt that he had lost part of himself and the need to continue painting for the series ‘Odessa of My Youth’ was overwhelming. Although he met with success in Israel and was celebrated with a one-man show in the Israeli "Museum, Jerusalem and the New Gallery of Haifa University in 1979-1980," "Ladizhenski still pursued melancholy themes in his work, suggesting that his" search for meaning had not abated with a move to his religious homeland. PROPERTY FROM THE FAMILY OF THE ARTIST "In 1982, following a one-man show in the Jerusalem Artists’ House," the artist tragically died. The five offered lots from this monumental cycle of painting are works by an artist whose way of looking forward was looking back into the past. The whole of Odessan life in the Twenties is depicted and preserved for generations to come who would know nothing of it otherwise.