At auction in Moscow will exhibit paintings by Levitan and Kandinsky for 1.5 billion

The Moscow Auction House will hold an auction on October 18, the catalog of which includes 320 lots with a total estimated value of 1.5 billion rubles. Among the most expensive works are the landscape of Vasily Kandinsky “Summer Day. Noon” with an estimate of 90 million rubles. and the work of Isaac Levitan “Autumn. Valley of the River”, estimated at 30 million rubles. This was reported by RBC in the auction house.

Estimate is a preliminary estimate of the value of a work of art, which the auction house indicates in the catalog before the auction. It reflects the estimated range of the sale price, but is not the final value of the lot: the final price is determined during the bidding.

In total, the catalog presents more than 130 landscapes of Russian artists of the XIX-XX centuries. According to the organizers, about 30% of the lots are the works of recognized masters who influenced the development of Russian art.

Levitan’s painting “Autumn. Valley of the River”, dated 1893-1894, is the author’s version of the painting “River Valley. Autumn” in 1896 from the collection of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The work was done in pastels.

“A special value to the work adds that it is made in pastel technique. Pastel works are extremely fragile, rarely reaching our days in such good condition. In this case, the safety is almost perfect, said Olga Rusakova, managing director of the auction house.

The origin of the picture is confirmed by an expert opinion, the artist’s autograph on the back of the canvas and inscriptions on the original subframe. Previously, the canvas was in the collection of physicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Vladimir Mitkevich and his wife Ekaterina.

Kandinsky’s landscape “Summer Day. Noon” was created in 1898-1900, the size of the work is 32.7 by 23.6 cm. According to the auction house, Kandinsky’s painting will be presented for the first time at public auction in Russia.

" Wassily Kandinsky is considered the most expensive Russian artist at world auctions. In the history of the auction Sotheby’s and Christie’s total value of 40 of his works exceeded $ 591 million, beating in this ranking the things of Malevich and Chagall, — said the collector, art historian and founder of the Moscow auction house Sergey Podstanitsky.

According to him, the high cost of Kandinsky’s works is due to their rarity on the open market and interest from Russian and foreign collectors.

The catalog also includes works by Ilya Repin, Nicholas Roerich, Peter Konchalovsky, Konstantin Yuon, Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov, Alexander Benois and Vasily Polenov. Among the presented works is “Portrait of Zinaida Alekseevna Pertsova” by Yuon in 1899 with an estimate of 35 million rubles. In addition, the auction will put up original graphics, ancient icons, antique porcelain and objects of decorative and applied art of the XVIII-XX centuries.

The auction will be held on October 18 at 17:00 in online format and in person at the address: Bolshaya Ovchinnikovskiy Lane, 22, page 3. The pre-auction exhibition will be open to visitors until October 17.

On October 6, the British auction house Bonhams reported that works by Soviet nonconformist artists from the collection of Swiss journalist Eric A. Peschler (1922-2005) were sold at an online auction for a total of about €1 million. The most expensive lot was the painting Logie Grisha Bruskin (1986), sold for €254.4 thousand.

In May, the auction house “Litfond” sold the painting by Alexei Savrasov “Summer landscape” for 29 million rubles. Also sold works by Vasily Perepletchikov “Evening after a thunderstorm” for 1.1 million rubles. at an initial rate of 260 thousand rubles. and a graphic sheet of Peter Konchalovsky “Oaks in Abramtsevo” (1920) for 1 million rubles.