MacDougall Auctions 12-18 June 2008
12 June 2008
* 49. LUPPIAN, VLADIMIR 1892-1961
Revolution as a Stage of Evolution signed and dated 1929-61.
Oil on canvas, 71 by 53.5 cm.
250,000-300,000
Exhibited: The Filonovites: From the Masters of Analytical Art to the Post-Avantgarde, Gallery Art-Divage, Moscow, December 2006-February 2007.
Literature: Exhibition catalogue, A. Borovsky, A. Kuznetsoff, The Filonov School, Filonovites: From the Masters of Analytical Art to the Post-Avantgarde, Scorpion, Moscow, 2006, p. 88 and illustrated on the front cover.
Art Panorama, Moscow, Soviet Art Publishing, 1990, p.115 illustrated.
This painting offered for auction is according to Alexander Borovsky “Luppian’s main Filonovite work”; he worked on it right up until his death, for over thirty years. Luppian displayed his devotion to his teacher not only personally, but also through his entire family. He married an actress, Maria Sysoevna, who sewed the costumes designed by the Collective of Masters of Analytical Art for Igor Terentiev’s famous production of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector at the Experimental Theatre in the House of Printing in Leningrad. Vladimir also brought his teenage daughter, Muse, to study under Filonov.
Luppian’s own art was orientated on the principle of “madness”. The entire volumetric-spatial work was cultivated from point to point. The micro and macro levels were constantly in mutual contact, with the help of a form of capillary system. Although the artist ostensibly closely followed his teacher’s “samples,” his works were by no means clones of Filonov’s creations. Filonov demanded “biological madness.” While Luppian’s works can also be compared
to organisms, they are more like “mechanical organisms” or, to be more exact, “metaphorical-mechanical organisms” – the “steel machines that have no soul” described in Alexander Blok’s poem, The Scythians (1918).
Among Filonov’s students, the concept of “techno” was closest to the heart of Luppian. This concept even resounds in titles of such works as Quantums of Light and Energy as Matter. Luppian is clearly looking at the experience of Kliment Redko and his Electro-organism. He appears to be attempting to visualise the energetics of life: the metaphorics of accumulators, energisers, energy fields and discharges can be read in the haze of dots caught up in a centripetal movement and the “power lines.” Imagining Filonov’s movement as a front, Luppian would seem to head the “techno” flank (emulating such sample works by Filonov as GOELRO and Mechanic).
Alexander Borovsky,
Head of Contemporary Russian Art, the Russian State Museum.
Notes on symbols:
* Indicates 5% Import Duty Charge applies.
Ω Indicates 20% Import Duty Charge applies.
§ Indicates Artist's Resale Right applies.
† Indicates Standard VAT scheme applies, and the rate of 20% VAT will be charged on both hammer price and premium.