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VASILI IVANOVICH SHUKHAEV (russian 1887-1972) STILL LIFE WITH FRUIT AND EWER Signed in Cyrillic and dated '1965' bottom right, sanguine, gouache and pastel on paper laid down to board Sheet size: 27 13/16 x 19 5/8 in. (70.6 x 59.8cm) provenance: Property of a Foundation. note: Born in Moscow in 1887, Russian painter Vasily Ivanovich Shukhaev was orphaned at an early age. He was sent by relatives at just ten years old to study at the Stroganov Central School of Technical Drawing in Moscow, thus beginning a nearly seventy year career that spanned multiple disciplines and countries. Not content to restrict himself to a single creative pursuit, Shukhaev was also a film and theater designer, decorator, and eventual educator, later becoming a professor of painting at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad and the Academy of Architecture in Moscow. In 1937, two years after his return from Europe to his native Russia, Shukhaev and his second wife were arrested for allegedly committing counter-revolutionary crimes. Shukhaev spent eight years in a labor camp, though by the end of his sentence he was working as a theater director, designing stage decorations for the Magadan Theatre of Music and Drama, a punishment that hardly seemed like one to an aesthete who thrived on creativity. Shukhaev would spend the remainder of his life after his release in the Soviet Union, specifically Tbilisi, where he continued to paint the landscapes surrounding his home in the Georgian capital and his country retreat in the mountains, in his characteristic, lushly colored palate.