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«Incidental objects come across seldom or never». Roman Frolov, FORBES, November 2005.

IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE EVEN 10 YEARS AGO. Yea! – even five years ago the social realism with its ideological implications seemed unpromising in commercial terms.
IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE EVEN 10 YEARS AGO. Yea! – even five years ago the social realism with its ideological implications seemed unpromising in commercial terms. Depictions of workers, collective farmers and leaders of world proletariat were cheaply being sold off as souvenirs on a par with Komsomol badges and khokhloma paintings among foreigners. Finally, a couple of years ago, the soviet art became a point of interest for the Russian middle class. For today’s customers there are no taboos: sociorealizm – is nostalgia. They like a moderate price and “optimistic spirit” of average class paintings by soviet artists. Such canvases are good in decorating walls of suburb cottages and penthouses. Many works are bought by businessmen in order to make gifts to politicians or high officials. This is an irony of the history: sociorealizm paintings perfectly blend in with office style. The important advantage of sociorealizm is to simply affiliate paintings, which belong to this genre. Usually, it turns out, that authors themselves are still alive and, moreover, their successors or arts critics, who personally knew such artists. “You will hardly or almost never hear about miraculously lost, and then miraculously found works, as it may happen, for example, with works by old masters” – says Yury Tuhtin, the owner of the art gallery with such an expressive and significant title “SOVCOM”. Most of such works were made to the order, and were located at public offices, their history can be traced by quite practical way – by invoices and receipts. All great works are widely known, while the average ones are not so expensive now, as there is no sense to fake such pictures” The market itself is enormous – during the USSR period there have been thousands of professional artists. And such a fact, undoubtedly, makes the selection harder – the problem is how to distinguish a creation of genius from typical hack-works in such a pile of proposals? The works by the so-called academicians – active members of the Academy of Arts, laureates of state prizes, that are, the artists, which were recognized by the Soviet government - are considered as most valuable paintings. These are works by Aleksandr Deineka, Aleksnadr Gerasimov, Dmitry Nalbandian, Yury Pimenov, Gely Korzhev, Nickolay Romadin, Yakov Romas. The works by A. H. Nalbandian, a people’s artist of the USSR and an active member, one of those few painters, who had been allowed to paint Stalin from nature, were sold for a couple of thousand US dollars as far back as 12 years ago. In 2003 the prices increased up to $10 000, and have now reached $20 000-30 000. The works by a well-known landscape painter, a holder of the Order of Lenin and the Red Banner of Labour, Nickolay Romadin, for the last two years have increased in their value from $2000-4000 up to $15 000-20 000. The cost for his several outstanding works reaches $50 000. But these are the classicists of the soviet genre, and how the land lies for paintings created by not so famous artists? According to Yury Tuhtin, the representatives of the so-called drastic style are underestimated. This trend appeared in the late 1950-th, when workers of harsh professions, and not like Stakanovs, but unknown pilots, geologists and constructors became heroes of such paintings. Within authors of moderate price paintings of that time Tuhtin distinguishes Petr Ossovsky, Viktor Ivanov, Eduard Bragovsky. According to the art gallery official, for the period of last year the prices for works have increased from $5000 up to $10 000-15 00- and will be increasing as well up to $25 000 at least. The brilliant example of “drastic style” is Viktor Popkov, the author of monumental painting “The builders of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station”. According to Tuhtin, even two years ago Popkov’s pictures were sold at $2000. And during the last spring session, Popkov’s “Electricians” were sold at 14.400 ($26 000) at “Sotheby’s” auction in London. In fact, the “real” artist’s canvas is kept in one of St. Petersburg museums, and in London there was sold the early author’s version – such situation is typical of sociorealizm market. Besides outcompeted painters of sociorealizm there are also graphical works and sketches by the same academicians or paintings of soviet cartoonists and graphical painters – their costs range from several hundreds and up to several thousands dollars, and even the richest painting-hunters can not afford it.

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