Paintings
May 19 - June 18, 2005
Thursday-Friday, 12.00-18.00; Saturday 12.00-16.00
Opening: Thursday May 19, 18.00-20.30
Matthew Bown Gallery is honoured to present the first London exhibition by one of Russia's outstanding modern artists, Ilya Tabenkin (1915-1998).
After an early life blighted by Stalinist repression - for a trivial offence he was sentenced to several years in a concentration-camp followed by internal exile - Tabenkin managed, miraculously, to re-enter the art world by enrolling at the Moscow Art Institute during World War II.
After the war, Tabenkin ploughed a lonely furrow. A long apprenticeship as a plein-air painter was followed in the 1960s by concentration in the studio on still-lifes and figure paintings. During this period, he fed voraciously on the work of old and Russian masters: Giotto, Masaccio, Zurbaran, Pirosmani, Tyshler, Falk.
In the early 1970s he found his unique voice and created the series of numinous still-lifes that have become famous: images of enigmatic hand-shaped figures (clay, plaster and papier-mache) set in abstract 'landscapes' constructed from paper and cloth.
The exhibition at Matthew Bown Gallery is organised jointly with the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow. It is accompanied by a 186-page book on the artist, illustrated by approximately 370 colour plates.
Matthew Bown Gallery
First floor
11 Savile Row
London
W1S 3PG
t. +44 20 7734 4790
f. +44 20 7734 4791
e. mail@matthewbown.com
Download a .pdf version of the book Ilya Tabenkin
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Ceramics 1974 Oil on canvas 59.5 x 69.5 cm |
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Light 1985 Oil on canvas 46 x 90 cm |
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Still-Life Ca. 1988 Oil on canvas 64.5 x 99 cm |
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Still-Life 1985 Oil on canvas 70 x 74 cm |
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Nymph 1980 Oil on canvas 50 x 90 cm |
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Still-Life 1980s Oil on canvas 48 x 90 cm |
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Still-Life 1983 Oil on canvas 64.5 x 73.5 cm |
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Untitled 1980s Oil on canvas 48 x 89.5 cm |
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Still-Life Ca. 1988 Oil on canvas 50 x 95.5 cm |
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Extra-Terrestrials 1986 Oil on canvas 75 x 85 cm |
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Still-Life 1977 Oil on canvas 52 x 61.5 cm |