Lydia Masterkova, b.1927

Lydia Masterkova is unquestionably one of the leading female artists of 1960s and 70s nonconformist movement. It was as a result of the uncompromising attitude of the Lianozovo group to which she belonged together with Vladimir Nemukhin, Dmitri Plavinsky and Oscar Rabin that a true 'Alternative' culture developed in Russia.

In contrast to much of the unofficial art of the time, Masterkova sought to create universal images which did not depend on nostalgia or recognisable forms. Her work owes much to the geometric shapes of Malevich's Suprematism and truly embodies the link between avant-garde art of the 1910s and Russian Abstract Expressionism.

John Bowlt describes the equilibrium of her restrained colours and forms as 'a painted liturgy that invites the spectator to commune with her art in reverent solitude'.  In part this stems from Masterkova's concern with fate and the overwhelming power of the universe, as she explained in 1983,
'The essence of a work of art: lofty spirituality. Isolation is the tragedy of the Russian; outside of society; no feeling of the real world, only ones own world... Not a feeling of weightlessness, but a striving upward to that which is inaccessibly real - the real and the abstract'

The offered work is an exemplary early piece, directly comparable to the 1974 composition in the Kolodzei Art Foundation, New York. Believed to have been purchased during the Bulldozer Exhibition in Izmailovo Park in September 1974, it is one of the first in a series of large canvases begun in 1973, and concluded in 1975 when the artist emigrated to France. In these works, Masterkova attempts to overcome her feelings of alienation by achieving complete visual harmony. Combining collage, brushwork and palette knife, they feature dark ragged strips above a row of brilliant white circular relief containing the numerals 1, 9 and 0. These are inspired by the artist's fascination with logic and the secret significance of numbers, but also hint at the connection between science and abstract art, whose promotion alongside developments in algebra and geometry rendered it more palatable to the Communist Party.