oil on canvas
90 x 102 cm (35 1/2 x 40 1/8 in.)
signed, dated and titled on verso

EXPERTISE
Accompanied by a certificate of expertise from E. Petrova, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2007

LITERATURE
L. Zinger, Alexander Samokhvalov (Moscow: Sovetsky khudozhnik, 1982) (illustrated)

LOT NOTES
Alexander Samokhvalov, one of the foremost representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, began his artistic career in 1914 at the Higher Art School at the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Unlike many of his peers at the academy and the Mir iskusstva circle, such as Eugene Lanceray, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, or Alexander Osmerkin, in the late 1920s Samokhvalov enthusiastically embraced the development of Socialist Realism for which he is remembered. As in his most recognizable work — Girl in a Football Shirt, awarded the gold medal at the International Art Fair in Paris (which also exhibited Pablo Picasso's Guernica) — his paintings from the 1930s often showcase the first generation of Soviet women as the face of modernity and strength.

At first glance, the present painting, made in the year before Samokhvalov's death, appears divergent from the youthful athletic heroism associated with his oeuvre. Here, instead, the painter balances an illustration of working-class Soviet society with an introspective group portrait. The tightly cropped scene, while taking place among supposed strangers, is both a highly intimate and dynamic one. The expressions of the passengers — like the faraway gaze of the blonde man facing the viewer, or of the woman occupying the center left of the painting, or the man beside her glancing upward (as if about to start a conversation) — are oblique yet lively. Each is perpetually at the brink of action: take the woman in the lower right, hands placed on the handle of the seat in front, perhaps ready to disembark, or the one in a striped headscarf, lips questioningly parted.

The legible dramatic narrative and typology of early Soviet painting is adapted here to a microcosmic snapshot of daily life, punctuated by an etherial ambiance awarded by the rain-blurred windows. Awash in hazy mauves and umbers, the bus interior, at Samokhvalov's hands, transforms into a meditative landscape. Indeed, public transit, that cornerstone of modern life, has long served as an artist's ideal venue for the convergence of public and private, interior and exterior. From the Socialist Realist subway scenes of the 1930s to the photorealistic paintings of Semen Faibisovich, the Russian painting tradition has never been able to abandon the hidden poetic potential of the day-to-day traveler.

CONDITION
Observed in frame, the work is in overall good condition. Inspection under UV light shows scattered areas of retouching, the largest one being a vertical repair, possibly to a tear, along the upper left corner, approximately 30 cm (12 in.) long, and to the center of the beige coat. No more than 5% of the canvas is inpainted.

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