Lot 500 in this week’s is by the Russian Realist artist, Boris Anatolievich Sholokhov .
Like all Soviet painters he was to endure an extreme rigorous training; he first entered the Leningrad Academy of Arts,before completing his studies at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute, where his teachers included S. Chuykov, V. Yakovlec, A. Gritsaya, D. Corin and D. Oreshnikov.Sholokhov went on to teach himself and was employed at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts.
A fantastic draughtsman, Sholokhov turned his brush to portraits, landscapes and nudes. He painted in a naturalstic, figurative style which sought to capture an impression of a moment in time and his fast application of paint and visible brushstrokes created a lively energy in his works. The author Vern G. Swanson has labelled this style, common amongst Sholokhov’s contemporaries, ‘Soviet Impressionism’ (See Lot 498: Nikolai Latyashenko’s ‘Nude Girl Standing’). Alexey Steele writes of artists such as Sholokhov ‘They used the loose allure and lightening ease of paint on top of their stolidly academic understanding of forms and values’.
From 1950 onwards Sholokhov participated in many All-Union and individual exhibitions and today his works are store in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, in a collection of the Moscow Art Institute of Surikov, the ‘Artek’ Museum in the Crimea and in galleries in Penza, Voronezh, Borisoglebsk and Livadiya.
