작품 상세

Oil on cardboard Europa, um 1910-1917 Boris Israelewitsch Anisfeld (1879-1973) - Russian-American painter Signed lower right 'Boris Anisfeld' Overall dimensions framed: 92.7 x 78.7 cm Very good condition Provenance: from a Berlin private collection An expressive oil painting showing the artist's natural gift for colour; Anisfeld's floral still lifes fetch up to 280,000 Euro on the art market This floral still life by Boris Anisfeld shows an expressive composition with a lush bouquet of red flowers in a vase, framed by two orchids and a small bunch of field flowers. A bowl of juicy oranges is depicted in the foreground. The colourful flowers and fruits stand out wonderfully against the abstracted surroundings in muted colours. Influences of modernism are clearly visible - Cézanne's colour plasticity and Picasso's abstract aesthetics - but Anisfeld never adhered to any particular movement or style. He was first and foremost a colourist, an 'alchemist of colour', whose virtuosity in terms of colour composition is reflected in his entire oeuvre. The intensity of the yellows, oranges and reds is particularly impressive here. With free broad brushstrokes, the colours are applied impasto, which makes the composition oscillate between figuration and abstraction. This pastose surface texture essentially characterises the works by the Russian-American painter. The oil painting by Boris Anisfeld is in very good condition with only minimal framing marks along the corners. The work is signed lower right 'Boris Anisfeld'. The cardboard is slightly warped. The frame shows signs of age and wear with light color abrasions along the edges. Framed the work measures 92.7 x 78.7 cm. The board measures 78.7 x 64.5 cm. Boris Anisfeld (1879-1973) Boris Anisfeld was born in the province of Bessarabia, in South Eastern Europe, in 1879. From an early age he started drawing. In 1895 he began studying at the Art Academy of Odessa under Kiriak Konstantinov. Kostandi, then the school's leading teacher of portrait and figure painting. Thereafter Anisfeld attended the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1905, the artist and critic Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar took notice of the young painter and introduced him to Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev. The latter showed some of Anisfeld's works in a Russian exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in Paris. During the same period, the artist exhibited in St. Petersburg and Moscow. From 1907 onwards he designed sets and costumes for the theater, including Diaghilev's Russian Ballet. 1908, several of his paintings were exhibited at the Vienna Secession. In 1918 Anisfeld arrived in New York with his family, where he also worked as a stage and costume designer, particularly for Metropolitan Opera, while his works were exhibited in various museums and galleries. In the same year the Brooklyn Museum dedicated a large-scale exhibition to him, which was shown in nine other cities. In 1928 Anisfeld moved to Chicago where he took a teaching position at the Art Institute. In 1958 the latter devoted a retrospective to the artist, who had fallen into oblivion for almost 20 years. Boris Anisfeld's works are represented in the collections of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington.