Boris Sveshnikov

Acquired directly from the artist by Anne and Stéphane Tatischeff

Venice, La Biennale di Venezia, Palazzetto dello Sport all’Arsenale, La nuova arte sovietica: Una prospettiva non ufficiale, 1977

Exhibition catalogue La nuova arte sovietica: Una prospettiva non ufficiale, Venice: Marsilio, 1977, p.216 listed as Strada d'autunno

Original canvas on its original stretcher. There is damage to the canvas with very minor associated paint loss along the edge of the hill in the top left. There are minor frame abrasions along all four edges. There is a layer of surface dirt and spots of dirt in places. Inspection under UV light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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The present group of works from the collection of Anne and Stéphane Tatischeff (lots 217-228) is both of artistic and historical significance. Comprising paintings from the early 1970s by some of the most important representatives of Soviet Nonconformism, it is testament to the contribution of Russian émigrés to the survival of dissident thought and unofficial artistic production in the Soviet Union. The Tatischeffs acquired the works in this catalogue directly from the artists while they were living in Moscow in the early 1970s.

Born in Paris in 1935, Stéphane Tatischeff was the grandson of Count Dmitry Tatischeff, governor-general of Yaroslavl, who had been shot by the Bolsheviks in 1919. Devoted to Russian culture, Stéphane studied the language and became a Professor of Russian. After completing his doctorate in Russian literature in 1970, he served as the Cultural Attaché at the French Embassy in Moscow from 1971 to 1974. He had previously visited the Soviet Union as a tourist and through Natalia Stolyarova met Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

While working at the French Embassy, Tatischeff established a channel to safely smuggle manuscripts and other documents by dissidents out of Russia, serving as a direct link between Solzhenitsyn’s circle and Nikita Struve, Solzhenitsyn’s publisher in Paris. Anne later recalled how every time her husband would leave for Paris, she had to call Stolyarova from a public phone, neither from the airport nor too close to their house, to let her know that everything had gone to plan. Anne would also carry documents with her when travelling to France, including at one time a large package containing the archives of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who had perished in a Soviet camp in 1938 (A.Vyshnevsky, Perekhvachennye pis’ma, Moscow, 2001, pp.517-518).

On one trip to the Soviet Union in 1977, Tatischeff was harassed by the KGB, asked to leave the country and declared persona non grata. Back in France, Anne and Stéphane continued to support the dissident movement. Their house in Fontenay-aux-Roses became a magnet for Russian émigrés and rare visitors from the Soviet Union, including Mstislav Rostropovich, Bulat Okudzhava, Bella Akhmadulina and Boris Messerer.