SOKOLOV-SKALYA, PAVEL (1899–1961) Lot n° 39

View of the Moscow Kremlin, signed and dated 1925, also further signed, inscribed, titled in Cyrillic and dated on a label on the reverse. Oil on canvas, 99.5 by 141 cm. Provenance: Important private collection, Europe. Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert V. Petrov. Exhibited: La Russie inconnue, Salle d'exposition du Quai Antoine Ier, Monaco, 25 June–27 August 2015. Literature: X. Muratova, Neizvestnaia Rossiia. Russkoe iskusstvo pervoi poloviny XX veka, Milan, Silvana Editoriale, 2015, p. 281, No. 225, illustrated. Pavel Sokolov-Skalya’s View of the Moscow Kremlin is one of the rare landscape canvasses that the famous painter of battle scenes left to posterity. He is best known for his compositions involving many figures, filled with the pathos of heroic struggle and the romance of revolution. In the early 1920s, however, and even his first years with the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, when Sokolov-Skalya finally decided to dedicate himself to chronicling Soviet history, the artist painted lively landscapes distinctive for their intense colour and light touch of Mashkov. These works include views of Paris and Marseilles, but primarily of Moscow. The view in the present lot of the old Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge, the Moscow River and the Kremlin is typical of the artist’s landscapes at this time. Painted in 1925 when Sokolov-Skalya was still an active member of the Bytiye group, it fully reflects his and his fellow members’ artistic credo and desire to “move away from formalist experimentation and the etude approach towards form of contemporary painting”. The artist plays on the contrast between the red brick of the Kremlin walls and towers, the bright summer green of the gardens and grass on the river bank, the pale blue sky with its white clouds and the dark blue river, se