GRIGORIEV, BORIS. Red Army General - photo 1
GRIGORIEV, BORIS. Red Army General - photo 1

Red Army General

Lot 43
15.10.2020 14:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 80 000
AuctioneerMacDougall Arts Ltd.
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
Buyer Premium27 %
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 412535
Lot 43 | Red Army General
Estimate value
£ 80 000 – 120 000
Oil on canvas, 46 by 61 cm.Executed in the 1930s.

Provenance: Private collection, Europe.

Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert I. Vakar.

Red Army General, presented here for auction, was painted by Boris Grigoriev in the 1930s, and is seen now as a continuation of his celebrated series Visages de Russie, which he had produced a decade earlier in Paris. After that period, Grigoriev worked in Europe and the USA and taught in Latin America — everywhere with a success that was extraordinary for a Russian émigré artist.

Wherever he was, even in the 1930s, he never abandoned his Russian themes, adding to his Visages de Russie series the canvas frieze Characters from Gogol’s Play “The Government Inspector” (1933–1935), and Red Army General. Logically expanding the artistic formula that he had devised back in Russia in the Rasseya series, Grigoriev treats these late images in a deliberately grotesque manner. Although all the characters in the present work were originally based on real prototypes, they were distorted under the artist’s hand with such expressiveness that they acquired the features of surreal, ghost-like masks.

Freed from all incidental detail, Grigoriev’s Red Army General becomes a symbol of Soviet Russia as seen from afar, bearing the imprint of Bolshevik terror and degradation. The general is one of Alexander Blok’s twelve apostles of the Revolution, standing in the centre of the composition in a red-starred cowl, leading his country towards the new Communist faith. His comrades and brothers-in-arms stand on either side. In the distance, there is an edifice resembling something between the bell-tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral (shrine of the Imperial House of Romanov) and a Kremlin tower, its spire crowned with a red star: a cupola without crosses. Overhead, “their red flag strikes the watchful eye” (A. Blok, The Twelve).

Grigoriev significantly enlarges the characters’ faces, placing them against a symbolic background delineated in only a few strokes and lining them up in silent expectation at the very edge of the canvas. Thus, the central hero, who bears a distinct resemblance to the Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky, dubbed “the red Bonaparte”, and his stiff, lifeless companions may appear isolated from the background yet, rhythmically, are fully integrated into the composition.

The combination of a large-scale foreground configuration (sharply cropped, zoomed-in and fixed, as in a photograph) with a symbolical architectural landscape in the background is a compositional method Grigoriev had used in his portraits as early as 1916–1917, and then applied consistently in Rasseya, Visages de Russie and other works of the 1920s. However, in the picture Red Army General, the sombre, expressionist, and explicitly primitivist treatment of the subject, the economy of form and the simplicity of colour resonances enable the artist to eschew repetitiveness in referencing his own, previously devised images and sculptural forms.

The “shadow of Rasseya”, as Alexander Benois put it, was cast over all Grigoriev’s later work, including Red Army General. We can therefore regard this distinctive picture as one of the last Visages de Russie conceived by the artist. Red Army General is a development and to some extent the culmination of the series. It embodies, as Gleb Pospelov rightly says, an image of the Motherland that is “if not more joyful, then certainly deeper and more multi-faceted than that of Rasseya”.

Address of auction MacDougall Arts Ltd.
33 St James’s Square
SW1Y 4JS London
United Kingdom
Preview
15.10.2020 – 15.10.2020
Phone +44 20 7389 8160
Phone +7 495 799 4683
Fax +44 (0) 20 7389 8170
Email
4FQ.3FGKQHSRRSIHFPQS4@3SGAAHL@
Buyer Premium 27 %
Conditions of purchaseConditions of purchase
Business hoursBusiness hours
Mo 10:00 – 18:00   
Tu 10:00 – 18:00   
We 10:00 – 18:00   
Th 10:00 – 18:00   
Fr 10:00 – 18:00   
Sa closed
Su closed

More from Creator

Birch Forest
Birch Forest
£25 000
BORIS GRIGORIEV (1886-1939)
BORIS GRIGORIEV (1886-1939)
£4 000
Red Army General
Red Army General
£120 000
Chilean Girl
Chilean Girl
£120 000
Landscape in Brittany
Landscape in Brittany
£60 000
At the Ball
At the Ball
£50 000
Russian Peasants, Illustration for F. Dostoevsky's
Russian Peasants, Illustration for F. Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"
£30 000

Related terms

Frequently asked questions

First of all, you should register to be able to purchase at auction. After confirming your email address, enter your personal information in your user profile, such as your first name, last name, and mail address. Choose a lot from the upcoming auction and the maximum amount you want to place on it. After confirmation of your choice, we will send your application by e-mail to the appropriate auction house. If the auction house accepts a request, it will participate in the auction. You can view the current status of a bid at any time in your personal account in the "Bids" section.
Auctions are performed by auction houses and each of the auction houses describes their terms of auction. You can see the texts in the section "Auction information".
The results of the auction are published within a few days after the end of the auction. In the top menu of the site, find the tab "Auctions". Click on it and you will be on the auction catalog page, where you can easily find the category "Results". After opening it, select the desired auction from the list, enter and view the current status of the interested lot.
The information about the auction winners is confidential. The auction winner will receive a direct notification from the auction house responsible with instructions for further action: an invoice for payment and the manner in which the goods will be received.
Each of the auction houses has its own payment policy for the won lots. All auction houses accept bank transfers, most of them accept credit card payments. In the near future you will find detailed information for each case in the section "Auction information" on the page of the auction catalog and the lot.
Shipment of the won lot depends on its size. Small items can be delivered by post. Larger lots are sent by courier. Employees of the auction houses will offer you a wide range to choose from.
No. The archive serves as a reference for the study of auction prices, photographs and descriptions of works of art.
?>