Congratulations to R. Wharton who placed the winning bid of just $500 for April's silent auction painting "Spring in the Mountains" by Vasili Fedorovich Kondratyuk, estimated at $3,000- $4,000.

For our May silent auction we present this wonderful Spring painting, "Lilacs", by one of the premier landscape artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin. 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.

In this work Akinshin combines the spontaneity of a one time plein air outing together with the bright, particularly Ukrainian, colors that are noted in many artists of the period. Mikhail Vasilievich Akinshin brings a vibrancy and spirit to this piece which marks it as a classic.

We invite you to participate in this month's auction and thank everyone who placed bids last month.

Bidding begins at $250, followed by minimum bidding increments of $250. The auction will end Friday, May 31st at 6:00 pm.

BID FORM

Akinshin, Mikhail Vasilievich, "Lilacs"
23½'' x 26½'', Oil on Board
Estimated Value, $4,000 to $5,000, Current Bid $500, P. Sullivan

 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.

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.