There may be no better way to start a collection of Russian Art than to follow our monthly no reserve no minimum auctions. Every month we select a great painting and let you, our friends, go for it. Sometimes the painting sells above the estimated price, but often times it goes far below. This is a fun way to keep up with what is new at the gallery, to put a little excitement in your life, and at the same time add to your Russian art collection!

Congratulations to S. Shubach who placed the the winning bid for July's auction and added a treasure of impressionistic painting to his collection - and for a great price! The final bid for "Farm" by Ivan P. Yevcehnko was just $750. The estimated price for the painting was $3,000! Thank you to everyone who placed bids.

As our August auction choice, we are pleased to present "Outskirts of the Village" by Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin. This painting's value is estimated at $3,500. Bidding begins at $250, followed by minimum bidding increments of $250. The auction will end at 5 PM on Wednesday, August 31st.

Mikhail Akinshin is one of the premier landscape artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Akinshin had a unique ability to capture people as well as the hauntingly beautiful landscape of village life. He painted the countryside with emotion and reverence, always full of truth and integrity. Akinshin captured the gentility, vastness and living breath of the countryside of his native Ukraine and Uzbekistan where he studied.   BID FORM

Estimated Price $3,500,Winning Bid $2,250 E. & C. Nielson

Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin
"Outskirts of the Village"
1964, 28½'' x 19¾'', (72.50 x 50 cm), Oil on Board
Estimated Price $3,500, Winning Bid $2,250

Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin, (1927- 1980) Zaporozhye, Ukraine

Translated from the original Russian

Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin was born on February 18, 1927 in the village Lomovo, Kursk Region into a peasant's family. In 1951 M.V. Akinshin finished the Tashkent Art School. For a year he taught drawing at school. In 1953 he moved to the town of Zaporozhye and since this time has worked as a professional artist.

The artist travels often and has visited many places of our country. Everywhere, he tries to see and reproduce characteristic features of the terrain and its coloring. At the same time, M.V. Akinshin emphasizes skillfully his creative projects and in doing so retains peculiarities of his pictorial vision. The artist is especially carried away with diversity of our life, with fast rhythms and dynamics of contemporaneous. Probably, because of this, the local landscape became the main genre of his creative work.

Among landscapes created by M.V. Akinshin from 1968 to 1970, it is necessary to mention the picture titled A Northern Little Town - Velikiy Ustyug. Here the artist's beloved composition device is used -- high horizon. It gave the artist the opportunity to show the place from the bird's eye view. The attention is attracted to the originality of the old town.

However, the artist does not consistently repeat this skillfully found method. For example, in the other landscape Evening, the same place is represented in a different way. Here the view is from below with sharp color contrasts of bright red and orange buildings against the blue sky background. The artist shows a close-up of several buildings in major optimistic combinations with the Old Russian architecture.

His paintings Bus Station (1970) and Seaport (1970) are filled with a sense of multi-voiced noise and efficiency. These works suggest that Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin does not cease to search new devices of composition and color expressiveness.

He gives much attention to the work on studies during yearly trips over towns of our country. His paintings are not simply enlarged studies, not merely a mechanical transfer of a motif but laborious work on assertions of his views, image bearing executions of reality filled with personal feelings, emotional experiences and thoughts.

The landscape Summer which is in Zaporozhye Art Museum should also be attributed to the best of his works. Having reached the creative maturity, Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin peers into life fixedly and represents it more truthfully and deeply.

Akinshin, Mikhail Vasilievich (1927-1980)

-Born in Kursk, studied at Tashkent Art College. Active in Zhaporozhe, Ukraine from 1953. Specialized in landscapes.

-Since 1968 he has been a member of the USSR Union of Artists and takes an active part in regional and republican exhibitions.

-Mikhail Akinshin is listed in "A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Paintings, 1900-1980", by Matthew Cullerne Brown.

-Died in the 1980.