WHY IS RUSSIAN AND EASTERN EUROPEAN ART SO POPULAR IN BRITAIN TODAY?

WHY IS RUSSIAN AND EASTERN EUROPEAN ART SO POPULAR IN BRITAIN TODAY?

Interest in Russian and European art in the UK has been growing rapidly throughout the 21^st Century. Balman’s director and founder, Andy Balman, has been involved in buying and selling a wide range of contemporary Russian and Eastern European art for eight years and has considerably developed the market outside of London. Andy has direct contact with Russian painters and art experts, who visit the universities, select good quality paintings and know the international market place. This has enabled him to develop a strong reputation for exhibiting high quality work. In some cases, artists already have considerable international stature, such as Maria Stcherbinina, and in others, artists are well-established in their home country and are still growing their international reputation.

A Mature Market

The Russian market is now reaching a level of maturity. Around the year 2000, many Russian paintings arrived in the UK and the quality of these paintings was often overestimated by inexperienced gallery curators with little knowledge of Russian educational institutions and galleries. There is greater expertise, understanding and confidence within select UK galleries now.

In London in particular, there are galleries opening which specialise in Russian and Eastern European art, and many London galleries have regular exhibitions of the art. London holds a Russian Week every year and also a Russian Art Fair, designed to take advantage of the huge interest in Russian art shown in the major auction houses. Galleries such as Balman’s are developing this trend outside of the capital.

Groundbreaking Auctions

Russian artists and artists from the ex-Soviet Union Republic have been gaining popularity in the West since Sotheby’s held their first auction of Russian art in 1988. With growing international interest in this work, exhibitions of Russian art are being regularly staged in Europe and America. Sotheby's and Christie's now hold Russian Art Sales in London and New York twice a year. A new auction house, MacDougall's, specialising in the sale of Russian art, has recently been established in London, and is setting new world records, including the sale of a £1.4m masterpiece by Ilya Repin. This increases the popularity of established artists such as Dimitry Lisichenko.

In June 2010, Sotheby’s, London, began a series of Russian-themed sales which took place also at Christie’s, Bonhams and MacDougall’s auction houses. The sale at Sotheby’s brought in £10.4 million. The evening’s best-performing lot at Sotheby’s was Titi and Naranghe, Daughters of Chief Eki Bondo by Alexander Yakovlev (1887–1938), selling for £2.5 million against an estimate of £700–900,000. Meanwhile, Yuri Annenkov’s 1919 Portrait of Zinovii Grzhebin, sold for £1.8 million against an estimate of £1.2 million. Sotheby’s described it as, ‘one of the most important works by the artist ever to appear on the international market’.

A Strong Secondary Market

William MacDougall of MacDougall Arts Limited stated recently, ‘There are a number of positive signs now – oil prices, Russian equities and the rouble are up. Confidence is reviving and people are buying again’. Wealthy Russians are keen to diversify their assets and London galleries are seeing an increasing number of Russian buyers new to collecting who are keen to buy Russian art. Patriotism and good business sense means that this secondary market is strong, inside and outside of the capital.

Cross-Cultural Inspiration and Trade

Interestingly, it is increasingly popular for Russian galleries now to import British art, and Conceptualist British art is particularly admired in Russia.

Meanwhile, Western art movements such as Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism and, more recently, Conceptualism, are influencing Russian and Eastern European artists more and more. Ukranian Taras Gladyrenko’s work featured below is typical of this, with its distinctive, heavily Expressionistic style. Prior to this, work influenced by the West in this way was often destroyed, as in the infamous ‘Bulldozer’ exhibition in Moscow in 1974, when police used bulldozers and water cannons to break up an exhibition of unapproved art. Such cross-cultural inspiration is common now.

All of this makes for a fruitful and exciting time for collectors and lovers of this art!