Though "Old and New Moscow" is a pre-auction exhibition, it attracts disinterested art amateurs, as well. In general, the Moscow landscape – is a pet subject of art sellers. Capital views are attractive to broad audience – they want to wallow in nostalgia, to bring a present or just to keep a sovereign image of one's office. At the same time, they are not such frequent visitors of the art market, as they wish to be. It's almost impossible to find a Moscow landscape created in the 30-40-s. The racy Stalin's era, in terms of the art, was harsh on urban landscapers. Moscow, from its Kremlin to "the very outlying districts" was deemed a strategic site, and one just was not allowed to capture it on paper, canvas or photo film. So, among 156 lots of the September auction there were actually no works dated this epoch.
As for antiquity - there were lithographies by Vasiliy Timm and Adolph Sharlemann, works dated the 40-s are less than ten (including two water-paintings by Alexander Labas) and, in equal portions - each created in after-war decades. A significant share of the auction lots were presented by cheapie parade views of the Kremlin embankment, one of the which was created by Grigoriy Nisskiy. The style of laconic maestro of harsh wide spreads could hardly be recognized in these paintings – a licked clean panoramic view of the Kremlin would fascinate by its "candy" tints its future owner, which would agree to put out 3 mln. roubles for the picture. Despite the Kremlin estimated at modest 160.000, the next picture by Nisskiy named "The Pestovo Lighthouse" is more resembling his style.
The second top-lot of the auction is "View of the Kremlin Square" (see photo) by Nalbandyan with a donation signature of its author is 1 mln. 450 thousand roubles. In the same row is a splendid view of a stable yard at the Kuzminki Manor, smiled in the merry July sunshine, created by Petr Petrovich in 1920. The member of the Union of Russian Artists could not held out for a higher price than masters of social realism – so he is under one million. SOVCOM also offers some names traditional for its auctions – i.e. soviet painters ranging from Nikolay Romadin to Petr Ossovskiy, from Jacob Romas to Ilya Obrosov.
To create a feeling of multigenre auction, the Moscow views are mixed here with abstract landscapes of Middle Russia, soviet genre and portraits. Among them there is a wonderful, probably Moscow, lad dressed in a striped T-shirt, painted by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin in 1934.
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