Description:

VASILY SHULZHENKO (RUSSIAN B. 1949)
Hockey Players, 2000
oil on canvas
133.3 x 162.5 cm (52 1/2 x 64 in.)
signed, dated, and titled on verso

LOT NOTES
Although Shulzhenko was born in Moscow, where the artist lives and works, much of his oeuvre features that which is - both literally and figuratively - marginal. The subjects of his frank and often graphic paintings are situated in transitional spaces: the street, the village, the public restroom, and, most obviously, the verges of society. Simultaneously, the artists` works, imbued with a Bacchanalian facetiousness, are equal parts inflammatory social commentary and light hearted gag joke. Shulzhenko's men and women are conventionally unattractive, their bodies and faces as frequently distorted by alcoholism and anger as they are by lust and laughter. While heavily featuring the grotesque, the artist frequently comments on and subverts conventional artistic narratives.

Outfitted in handcrafted ice skates and wielding wooden hockey sticks, "The Hockey Players", faced red from the cold, are shown engrossed in a fierce match with a tin can in place of a puck. The painting is clearly informed by the works of Dutch and Flemish masters, such as the portraiture of Frans Hals, the landscapes of Aert van der Neer, and the genre paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and David Teniers. The exquisite treatment of paint, applied generously to create the illusion of textured ice, also lends itself to comparisons to the moonlit landscapes of Romantic Caspar David Friedrich and the Peredvizhnik painters Isaac Levitan and Ivan Shishkin.

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