OSKAR RABIN | THE CITY OF PARIS

Grosvenor Gallery, London

Sotheby and Co, 12 June 1968, lot 187

Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner 

Exhibition catalogue Oscar Rabin, London: Grosvenor Gallery, no.23 listed

In 1961 the artist was living with his family at Lianozovo, a former prison-camp barrack on the outskirts of Moscow which served as a cultural center for the intelligentsia and had never visited Paris. Rabin's imagined view of the city incorporates an approximation of Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower into a scene otherwise filled with familiar tropes: the overhead electric cables from his days working in a railway yard, the glass jar of pussy willow in the foreground, the icon-like figure of Christ in the door portal. 

 This painting was exhibited at the artist's first solo exhibition at London's Grosvenor Gallery in 1965.