Vladimir Vassilyevich Lebedev

V.N.Petrov, Vladimir Vasil'evich Lebedev, 1891-1967, Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1972

Original canvas. The picture is clean and ready to hang. There are some minor surface scratches in places and some fine lines of craquelure. There is some light abrasion visible to the lower right hand corner on the inner frame edge. UV light reveals some spots of retouching to spots of retouching in places along the edges, which fluouresce white. Held in a modern painted wooden frame with protective cardboard backing to the reverse. Unexamined out of frame.
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Vladimir Lebedev was a celebrated member of the Russian avant-garde. He was a talented painter, brilliant draughtsman, the creator of the 'ROSTA windows' propaganda posters during the revolution, and a pioneer in the development of children's books. His art is a happy marriage of two seemingly contradictory principles: a talent for logical thinking and a facility for immediate perception. Lebedev was interested above all in the exciting world around him, which he studied with the application of a dedicated researcher and the passion of a true sportsman. His faultless professionalism, innate analytic skill, and constant openness to and fascination for bold formal experimentation all guaranteed Lebedev a leading position in various creative fields.

 

Lebedev's career as an independent artist dates from 1904, when he painted  some postcards which were sold in Fietta, a shop in Saint Petersburg. Lebedev worked in Bernstein's studio between 1912 and 1916, during which time he picked up the basics of anatomy. Like many of his contemporaries, he began to study Cubism, which remained for him not so much a world-view as an essential experience which was foundational to his later work.

The 1920s saw the blossoming of Lebedev's talent. His circle of friends at this time included many key players in the avant-garde, such as Vladimir Tatlin, Ivan Puni, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Mayakovsky and the critic Nikolai Punin. Over the course of the 1930s and 1940s Lebedev worked on a series of painted portraits. He rarely accepted commissions: his models were generally close friends, professional life models, or sportsmen. Lebedev played sport from childhood: he enjoyed football, boxing and wrestling, and was a member of the Leningrad Association of Referees. After his death he left a number of drawings depicting fighters in the ring or on the mat, and sketches of swimmers in the pool and footballers on the pitch.

This painting shows Aleksei Bakun, Champion of the USSR (1935) and Master of Sport (1940). He won seventy-three of his ninety-one bouts. As well as being a veteran of the Second World War, he also wrote a book 'A Boxer's Notes' (Lenizdat, 1975).

We are grateful to Natalya Kozyreva, Head of the Department of Drawings and Watercolours from XVIII-XXI centuries at the State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg, for providing this note.