GORBATOV, KONSTANTIN1876 Stavropol - 1945 Berlin


Title: "In Venedig".
Date: 1925.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 50.4 x 60.4cm.
Notation: Signed and dated lower right and on the back: "C. Gorbatoff 1925".
Frame: Framed.
Titled verso.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany (for three generations);
Leipzig, Galerie Vecchio (label verso).

We are grateful to Olga Sugrobova-Roth, Düsseldorf, who confirmed the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original, for her help while cataloguing.

Three fishing boats are moored close together in front of a harbour pier in Venice. The sails of the three boats are partially coloured a striking orange-red. They rise into the sky like pointed red wedges. The sails are painted with a broad, strong brushstroke and, for all their dynamism, provide a balancing counterweight in this composition, in which the waves, the harbour structures and buildings as well as the sky appear in short, quick brushstrokes and reflect the shimmering light of the south. The moving sea surface in the foreground with its dissolved reflections calms down in the background and is separated from the sky by the clear line of the harbour buildings.

Konstantin Gorbatov, who created this atmospheric and colourful painting in 1925, trained as a civil engineer and initially studied technical drawing and architecture at the Saint Petersburg Art Academy before devoting himself entirely to painting. In 1912, a scholarship enabled the artist to spend his first long period in Italy, where he spent most of his time in Rome and Capri.

After returning to Russia, he lived as a successful artist in Moscow and St Petersburg. However, the revolution and civil war in his homeland forced Konstantin Gorbatov to emigrate. In 1922, he first settled in Capri, from where he travelled to Italy and other European countries. From 1926 he lived in Berlin. There he joined a circle of compatriots living in exile. In the 1920s and 1930s, Konstantin Gorbatov was well established and had a solid base of collectors, enabling him to maintain his busy travelling schedule throughout Europe and as far as the Middle East. He worked with renowned galleries, such as the Galerie Abels in Cologne, which organised a solo exhibition for him in 1931, and the Galerie Vecchio in Leipzig, from whose collection the present painting comes. With the outbreak of the war, Konstantin Gorbatov was subjected to severe repression as a Russian citizen and died impoverished in Berlin in 1945.

The fishing boats off Venice are a typical work by the painter from his time in Italy in the mid-1920s. Venice and the special light atmosphere there particularly fascinated Konstantin Gorbatov and inspired him to create impressive paintings. This balanced and at the same time exciting composition with its splendid colours reveals the full mastery of the late Impressionist artist.