Rating and value of paintings by Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev

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Artist's rating and value

A Russian artist who pioneered abstraction, Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev established himself as a major artist of his time. He produced works inspired by several twentieth-century currents and his native country, mixing media.

On the art market, his works sell for very good prices and keep a stable quotation.

As such, a work signed by the artist's hand can fetch millions of euros at auction, as witness his oil on canvas Still life with three jugs dating from 1976, fetched €656,800 in 2006.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's works and style

Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (1925 - 1995) was a Russian painter associated with the unofficial Soviet metaphysical current, active in Moscow's underground art circles. He developed a visual language based on metaphysical still life, detached from the dominant socialist realism.

In his works, he seeks a silent, timeless atmosphere akin to Giorgio Morandi, but with a much more pronounced symbolic dimension. The recurring objects are shells, animal skeletons, corals, pebbles, boxes, tool fragments and found objects, always treated as relics or relics.

There is a total absence of direct narrative. The compositions function as visual meditations, focused on order, matter and memory. There is a strong stylization of forms, reduced to their essence : volumes are simplified, contours soft and organization almost architectonic.

He makes constant use of the horizontal table or plan-socle that supports the objects (also used in traditional still life at Clara Peeters or Balthasar van der Ast), generally set very low and reinforcing the effect of monumentality. The construction is stable and often frontal, with implicit symmetries, alignments, strict verticals and an almost ceremonial arrangement of elements.

He works with repetitive sequences of objects (shells, stones, boxes) that establish a meditative rhythm. The chromatic range is deliberately restrained (browns, ochres, greys, muted greens, off-whites), with the occasional hint of iridescence on the shells.

The light is diffused, with no identifiable source, and a homogeneous illumination that cancels out dramatic effects and inscribes the object in a suspended atmosphere. He makes moderate use of contrasts, favoring muted, even powdery tones.

Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev mainly uses oil on canvas or cardboard, in very controlled application : the strokes are fine, the superimpositions transparent and there is no impasto. He works meticulously with texture, rendering chalky, pearly or eroded surfaces with a " smooth surface " effect, the brushstroke is almost invisible, creating a subtle, austere materiality.

The linearity is discreet, with contours slightly emphasized to isolate objects in space. Still life becomes an instrument of metaphysical contemplation, evoking fragility, memory and the passage of time.

The artist uses no contemporary elements of everyday life: the objects seem uprooted from the real world and carried into a non-place. The spiritual dimension is strong, but not religious, with an almost monastic approach rooted in the Russian tradition of iconic objects.

The work of Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev weaves a conceptual proximity with Morandi, Chardin or Italian metaphysical painting, while remaining profoundly Russian in sensibility. He is associated with the Second Russian Avant-Garde movement, marked by interiority and silent resistance to socialist realism.

The life of Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev

Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev (1925 - 1995) was a Russian painter. From 1942 to 1947, he trained at Moscow's " 1905 " Regional Academy of Fine Arts. He then studied at Moscow's Surikov Art Institute (" V. Surikov ") from 1949 to 1955.

From 1956 - 1957, he began exhibiting in the USSR and abroad. He is considered one of the leading representatives of the " Shestidesiatniki " generation (artists of the 1960s) in the context of Soviet non-conformist art.

In 1993, he received the informal Prix Triumph award for his body of work. After the publication of one of his still lifes in Life magazine, he was criticized for " formalism ", and found himself expelled from the Soviet Artists' Union, living in seclusion while continuing to work.

His recognition in Russia only increased after the Perestoyka period, with several institutional exhibitions. His work is held in several museums, including the MoMA collection. He produced over a thousand paintings in his career, notably metaphysical still lifes.

Focus on a still life by Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev

This oil on masonite dated 1969 and measuring 51 x 60 cm constructs the motif architectonically. The artist depicts a set of rectangular stone blocks, with a frontal organization, a quasi-megalithic structure that evokes an altar or ritual enclosure.

The stacking is strict, verticalized and perfectly stable. The artist seeks to express " statism ". The brown vase, centered and partially obscured, functions as a sacralized object, protected or buried in a deliberately archaizing construction.

The partitioning is rigorous, the blocks forming an enclosed space that isolates the vase from the rest of the visual field. There is an absence of real depth, and the scene appears as a slow, meditative mise en plan, in which each object is independent but ordered according to a severe inner logic.

The surrounding black space, with no horizon and no identifiable light, cancels out any external spatiality and gives the objects a timeless character. The palette is restrained, with cool grey-whites for the blocks, a deep brown for the vase and a matte black background.

The light is diffuse, directionless and reveals the powdery materiality of the stone and the soft modelling of the vase. The absence of sharp contrast contributes to the composition's silent serenity. Surfaces are smooth but subtly grainy, with meticulous texture work, typical of the artist, giving each object a relic-like status.

The edges are slightly softened, with a reinforcement of the effect of calm monumentality rather than geometric hardness. The vase appears as an ancient artifact or protected vestige. It is not an object of use but an object of memory.

True to his aesthetic, Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev gives objects an existential status; they are out of the world, frozen in an inner temporality. The quasi-ritual arrangement of the forms evokes ceremony, permanence and meditation, in radical contrast to the dynamics of Soviet socialist realism.

This painting recalls Giorgio Morandi in the simplicity of the objects and the stripping back, but with more symbolic density, but also sacral or prehistoric architecture (megaliths, dolmens), the blocks don't represent identifiable stones, but archetypes of solid form.

This is typical of his mature 1960s period, with absolute rigor of form, a deliberately austere palette and objects reduced to their essence. The 1969 date corresponds to a moment when the artist reached the full definition of his " metaphysical still life ", based on stasis, meditation and verticality.

This work perfectly illustrates Krasnopevtsev's fundamental principles of formal asceticism, stability, timelessness and the sacralization of the object. Through the protective structure and monumentalization of the vase, the artist creates a space where the object describes nothing but is content to exist in density.

The work as a whole is a paradigmatic example of Soviet unofficial painting, where resistance comes through interiority and the poetic reformulation of material reality.

His signature

Not all of Dimitri Mikhailovich Krasnopevtsev's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here is a first example of his signature:

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