Ilya Grigorievich Chashnik

Ilya Ilich Chashnik, the artist's son, Leningrad
Lev Nussberg, Moscow, later USA
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York
Bruce and Kathy Gallagher McCowan, New York
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York
Acquired from the above in 1997

New York, Leonard Hutton Galleries, Ilya Grigorievich Chashnik - Watercolors, Drawings, Reliefs, 2 November 1979 - 15 March 1980, no.4
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Avant-garde in Russia 1910-1930: New Perspectives, 1980-1981, no.24

Exhibition catalogue Ilya Grigorievich Chashnik - Watercolors, Drawings, Reliefs, New York: Leonard Hutton Galleries, 1979, p.79, no.4 listed; reproduced on the back cover
Exhibition catalogue The Avant-garde in Russia 1910-1930: New Perspectives, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980, p.137, no.24 illustrated b/w; p.136 listed

The edges of the sheet are even and it has discoloured slightly in line with age. Faint media staining is visible in the right of the composition. There are few minor repaired tears, one in the right edge, the lower right corner and the top left corner. There is a diagonal crease through the lower left and top right corners and some other minor creasing. Each of the bottom corners has very slight paper losses. On the reverse is a suprematist composition in red and black ink over pencil. The sheet is hinged to the mount at the top two corners. Held behind glass in a black and gold frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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The Cosmos, and its eventual population, was an essential idea of both European and Russian Futurism. In Russia the most influential writer on this subject was the 19^th century philosopher Nikolai Fedorov but it was the following generation of engineers and artists who attempted a more practical application of his ideas. ‘Cosmic feeling’ was one of the terms Malevich used to evaluate the relative success of a Suprematist artwork and Chashnik was one of the most enthusiastic adopters of this concept.

In both these compositions the individual components of suspended bars seem to flow weightlessly in space, as if the distance between them is controlled by magnetic attraction. It is their precise arrangement which creates a sense of energy, tension and movement.