VLADIMIR VASILEVICH LEBEDEV | WRESTLERS

Family of the artist

Phillips London, Russian Art, 2 April 1990, lot 54

Barry Friedman Gallery, New York

Collection of Geoffrey Beene

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Best known for his book illustrations and poster designs, Vladimir Lebedev was Art Editor of the state publishing house for children’s literature Detgiz between 1928-1933. This work belongs to the artist’s most interesting period, when free from the confines of children’s literature and before a damning article appeared in Pravda in 1936 denigrating the illustrators of the Leningrad school, he felt most able to experiment. Unsurprisingly this was also when he produced some of his best work, notably Girl with a Bouquet and the Turkish Wrestler series. From 1927, the Soviet Union began to invite foreign nations to participate in Classical Wrestling championships in Moscow, hosting Germany, Finland, and, in 1933, Turkey, over whom the Soviet team won a decisive victory. The highly-stylised works in this series demonstrate an ironic reappropriation of the aesthetic canon historically associated with the depiction of athleticism. The figures are not engaged in any sporting activity or posing but stand resolutely en face, as in the present lot, or in the company of a naked girl.

Lebedev’s talent as an illustrator and eye for design was clearly something that appealed to the work’s later owner, the fashion designer Geoffrey Beene. A photograph from a New York Times article shows the present lot hanging on the wall of his Hawaiian beach house, coordinating perfectly with the graphic wallpaper in an elegant Art Deco interior (fig.1). Cited by both Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs as the greatest American designer of the 20^th century, Beene had a number of other works by Russian artists in his collection, including Pavel Tcheltichew.