SERGEY SUDEIKIN (1882 – 1946) Harlequin and Pierrot, double self-portrait

signed ‘Soudeikine’ (lower right) gouache on board 27.6 x 35.7 cm executed circa 1927 Literature: A World of Stage, April-October 2007, exh. cat., Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan. A Time to Gather... Russian Art from Foreign Private Collections, exh. cat., Palace Editions, Saint-Petersburg, 2007, p. 193, no. 133, ill. American Artists from the Russian Empire, exh. cat., Saint-Petersburg, Palace Editions-Graficart, 2008, p. 139, no. 13, ill. Exhibited: A World of Stage, April-October 2007, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan. A Time to Gather... Russian Art from Foreign Private Collection, The State Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg, February-June 2008, Exhibition Center ‘Tsaritsyno’, Moscow, June-July 2008, No. 133. American Artists from the Russian Empire, itinerant: Norman, Oklahoma (Fred Jones Jr. Museum), San Diego (San Diego Museum of Art), Moscow (The State Tretyakov Gallery), Saint-Petersburg (The State Russian Museum), 2009. In original Neapolitan 19th century hand carved parcel guilt and painted frame with gesso flowers ‘The artist turned to images of Harlequin and Pierrot, classical figures of the Italian comedy who personify playfulness and theatricality, in different periods of his life. At the end of 1920s, working a lot on set designs for the Metropolitan Opera, Sudeikin was in search of pictorial and plastic solutions, consonant with tendencies in contemporary art. The images created by the artist clearly contain the idea of theatralisation of life and inclination for transformation of everyday life. The ambivalent nature of Sudeikin’s oeuvre, expressed in the play between the conditional and the concrete, reality and mystification, was further developed in the works of 1920’s. The decorativeness of the artistic solution reveals an emotional implication, pointing out the secret essence of these popular theatrical characters’ Ekaterina Shilova, from the exhibition catalogue of The State Russian Museum.