NATAN ISSAJEWITSCH ALTMAN* (Winnyzja 1889 - 1970 Leningrad)

NATAN ISSAJEWITSCH ALTMAN*
(Winnyzja ...

NATAN ISSAJEWITSCH ALTMAN*
(Winnyzja 1889 - 1970 Leningrad)
Landscape in blue, 1914
oil/canvas, 110 x 77 cm
signed Nathan Altman, dated 1914
provenance: auction house Hampel 2006; international private collection

ESTIMATE °€ 80.000 - 100.000
STARTING PRICE °€ 80.000

Natan Isajewitsch Altman from Vinnytsia in Ukraine first studied painting and sculpture in Odessa. From 1910 to 1912 he continued his. He continued his studies at the Russian Academy of Maria Vasilyeva in Paris. In the Paris studio of Ukrainian-Russian avant-gardist Vladimir Davidovich Baronov-Rossiné, where Altman worked, he met Marc Chagall, Alexander Archipenko, and David Shterenberg. In 1912 Altman returned to Vinnytsia, initially as a drawing teacher, before settling in St. Petersburg at the end of the year. Later Together with Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin, Lev Alexandrovich Bruni and others, he was a member of the group "Apartment No. 5" between 1910 and 1920. Jewish Altman, a protagonist of the Russian avant-garde, strove to combine Jewish symbolism with elements of Art Nouveau. Under the influence of his contacts in France and Russia, he later approached the international avant-garde stylistically. His art had a stylistically formative effect on the development of Socialist Realism. Along with Futurism and Vorticism, it was especially Cubism that found echoes in Altman's work in the decade. The present blue mountain landscape, which Altman builds up monumentally behind a mirror-like lake, dates from 1914, the year in which Altman's best-known work was also created, a portrait (Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) of the poet Anna Akhmatova, a native of Bolshoi Fontan near Odessa. Altman was a close friend of her. Akhmatova, depicted with neo-Saxon realism, sits in front of a wall painted with a landscape broken apart into crystalline cubes. The design elements of the trees and hills resemble those of our mountain landscape; also in the coloration of blue, green and yellow tones. Our landscape is likewise broken up into blue-green cubes, as if illuminated from within, which convey a crystalline overall impression. The latter is underlined by the water of the mountain lake, which becomes visible at a small group of buildings in the middle ground of the picture. It runs towards the lower edge of the picture, towards the viewer and leads the gaze into the depth of the picture space. The landscape is reflected in the lake, alienated and distorted.

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