watercolor on paper
49 x 33 cm (19 1/4 x 13 in.) [sight]
signed lower left


PROVENANCE
Collection of Lili and Michael Brochetain (see additional information under description below)


LOT NOTES
Celebrated for his vibrant views of theater and circus performers, Arthur Fonvizin`s brilliantly-colored works oscillate between the figurative and the abstract. Fonvizin studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, from which he was prophetically expelled together with Mikhail Larionov and Sergei Soudeikine for staging an unauthorized exhibition. In the years leading up to WWI, Fonvizin actively showed his works with the leading avant-garde associations, including the Blue Rose, Stephanos, Union of Youth, and the Jack of Diamonds, among others. Later, in 1937, his art was publicly condemned by the Soviet government for its formalist qualities alongside that of Robert Falk and Vladimir Favorsky, as one of the  Three Fs. It was shortly thereafter, during the 1940s, when he was exiled to Kazakhstan due to his German descent, that circus themes entered and took center stage in his oeuvre. This present lot - The Circus - is a prime example of the style that came to characterize Fonvizin`s works, with the woman in red and the whirlwind around her going in and out of focus.
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