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Flowers
Details
Boris Izrailevich Anisfel'd (1878-1973)
Flowers
signed and dated in Cyrillic 'B. Anisfel'd 1916' (lower right)
oil on canvas
38½ x 30½ in. (97.8 x 76.2 cm.)
Painted in 1916
Flowers
signed and dated in Cyrillic 'B. Anisfel'd 1916' (lower right)
oil on canvas
38½ x 30½ in. (97.8 x 76.2 cm.)
Painted in 1916
Provenance
Collection of Mrs. Otis Chatfield-Taylor.
The Shepherd Gallery, New York.
Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood.
Private Collection, Calistoga.
The Shepherd Gallery, New York.
Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood.
Private Collection, Calistoga.
Exhibited
Mir Iskutsstva, 1916, Petrograd [St. Petersburg].
The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, No. 56, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, 1918.
Boris Anisfeld in St. Petersburg 1901-1917, The Shepherd Gallery, New York, Fall 1984, plate 39, No. 40.
The Shepherd Gallery, New York, Fall 1984.
The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, No. 56, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, 1918.
Boris Anisfeld in St. Petersburg 1901-1917, The Shepherd Gallery, New York, Fall 1984, plate 39, No. 40.
The Shepherd Gallery, New York, Fall 1984.
Further details
1916 was a busy year for Boris Anisfel'd. He was putting the finishing touches on several important paintings he had been working on for some time, and preparing many new paintings in anticipation of a carefully planned trip to America to stage a major exhibition. The deteriorating military and political situation in Russia added urgency to his efforts.
This painting was one of 137 works which accompanied him and his family on the Trans-Siberian trip to Vladivostok in the Fall of 1917, on the first leg of their arduous and ambitious journey to New York, where they arrived in March 1918.
The painting of flowers had a special significance for Anisfel'd. As a child in Bessarabia, he had laid out and maintained an elaborate and wildly colorful flower garden on his family's property. His agronomist father, an estate manager, was impressed, and considered enrolling him in the agronomy school at Uman in what is now Ukraine. Fortunately, he recognized his talented son's artistic ability, and sent him to the Odessa Drawing School instead.
Later, as his career developed, Anisfel'd was exposed to the ideas of the Symbolists, for whom flowers, and the painting of flowers, was an act charged with almost religious meaning. Rudolph Steiner, the Austrian lecturer, educator, and propagandist of the Symbolist point of view, believed that a flowering plant was a consummate symbol of the perfection of nature. Anisfel'd and many of his artistic contemporaries in St. Petersburg were deeply influenced by Steiner's writings well before the outbreak of the War. For Anisfel'd, the painting of flowers was a form of meditation, and a way of centering himself in the tumultuous times in which he lived. The present painting is a fine example of this process of meditation realized in oil. These flowers seem to radiate a spiritual energy; their colors glow and reach out to the viewer.
Anisfel'd continued to paint flower arrangements throughout his long working life, but few are as successful as this early one painted in Russia, and very few have survived from this time.
We are grateful to Mr. Charles Chatfield-Taylor, Boris Anisfeld's grandson and recognized expert on the artist, for his assistance in writing this catalogue note.
This painting was one of 137 works which accompanied him and his family on the Trans-Siberian trip to Vladivostok in the Fall of 1917, on the first leg of their arduous and ambitious journey to New York, where they arrived in March 1918.
The painting of flowers had a special significance for Anisfel'd. As a child in Bessarabia, he had laid out and maintained an elaborate and wildly colorful flower garden on his family's property. His agronomist father, an estate manager, was impressed, and considered enrolling him in the agronomy school at Uman in what is now Ukraine. Fortunately, he recognized his talented son's artistic ability, and sent him to the Odessa Drawing School instead.
Later, as his career developed, Anisfel'd was exposed to the ideas of the Symbolists, for whom flowers, and the painting of flowers, was an act charged with almost religious meaning. Rudolph Steiner, the Austrian lecturer, educator, and propagandist of the Symbolist point of view, believed that a flowering plant was a consummate symbol of the perfection of nature. Anisfel'd and many of his artistic contemporaries in St. Petersburg were deeply influenced by Steiner's writings well before the outbreak of the War. For Anisfel'd, the painting of flowers was a form of meditation, and a way of centering himself in the tumultuous times in which he lived. The present painting is a fine example of this process of meditation realized in oil. These flowers seem to radiate a spiritual energy; their colors glow and reach out to the viewer.
Anisfel'd continued to paint flower arrangements throughout his long working life, but few are as successful as this early one painted in Russia, and very few have survived from this time.
We are grateful to Mr. Charles Chatfield-Taylor, Boris Anisfeld's grandson and recognized expert on the artist, for his assistance in writing this catalogue note.