Ivan Chuikov

Private collection, Europe, acquired directly from the artist

Sotheby's London, Russian Contemporary Art, 12 March 2008, lot 33

The motif of the window, first used by Chuikov in 1967, is central to the artist’s oeuvre. As the art critic Evgeny Barabanov notes, the window ‘…is a dialogue with the Renaissance idea of ‘painting as a window into the world’, but this dialogue immediately reveals a failure with far-reaching consequences: Chuikov takes this Renaissance metaphor seriously; he treats the window not only as a symbol, a sign, an image or a notion – he interprets it literally as a material structure […] The frame replaces the traditional canvas and stretcher for the artist. Yet behind the relief of this frame the viewer’s eye immediately discovers the flat ‘bottom’ of the stage scenery painted in a simplified manner. Instead of any movement in the direction of its depth [...] the viewer is presented with a greatly reduced depiction: a crudely painted surface [...] sometimes spreading beyond its limits. [...] Chuikov’s Windows are easily transformed into parables about the fate of our culture, existentially charged metaphors of social exclusion, isolation, lack of freedom’ (E.Barabanov, quoted in Ivan Chuikov, Moscow: Regina Gallery, 2010, p.198).