Alexander Konstantinovich Bogomazov

Y.A. Ivanitskaia (the artist's daughter)

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has never been removed from its original stretcher. The paint layer has most likely never been cleaned or varnished. It is unlikely that there are any retouches and overall the condition is extremely good.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

A leading member of the Ukrainian avant-garde, Alexander Bogomazov explained that in his work he sought "to liberate painterly elements from the fetters.... blocking and obscuring the painterly meaning of the picture." His paintings reflected the direction of early-twentieth-century Russian art—toward bold experimentation and the negation of traditional academic art.

Landscape with Trees was painted in 1911—a time when Bogomazov's style was still heavily influenced by the works of Victor Borisov-Musatov, a major practitioner of Symbolism in Russian art. The Symbolists regarded nature as unstable, illusory, and merely a collection of external appearances. The present lot is a very good example of the gradual development of Bogomazov's style from Symbolism to Futurism. The nature imagery here undergoes a radical simplification, seen in the emergence of geometrical forms in the landscape as well as the subtle interplay of abstract color modulations. Bogomazov's commitment to modernist formal experimentation led him to concentrate on harmonious arrangements of line and color. This work, which almost verges on abstraction, conveys the immaterial essence of color, its inner energy and luminosity.