SEMYON FAIBISOVICH | CHEERS! FROM THE NEGATIVES CYCLE

After graduating from the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1972, Semyon Faibisovich started his official career as an architect, allowing him to discretely pursue his own artistic projects on the side. In 1976 he began showing his work at an underground exhibition space on Malaya Gruzinskaya street, where in autumn 1985 he caught the eye of art dealers from New York. Since 1987 his paintings have been exhibited widely in the USA, Western Europe and Russia. This year the State Tretyakov Gallery held the first major retrospective of Faibisovich's work, timed to coincide with the artist's 70th birthday. 

The present lot belongs to a series of works executed during the artist's stay in New York between 1988 and 1990. Based on the principle of the photographic negative, this series is a metaphorical reference to the strange, through-the-looking-glass quality of Faibisovich's experience of America.