Semyon Faibisovich

Phyllis Kind, New York

Private collection, USA

Sotheby's New York, Russian Art Volume II. Post War and Contemporary Art, 15 April 2008, lot 238

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Bern, Kunstmuseum Bern, Ich Lebe – Ich Sehe, Künstler der Achtziger Jahre in Moskau, 11 June - 14 August 1988, illustrated

Ridgefield, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Adaptation and Negation of Socialist Realism: Contemporary Soviet Art, 9 June - 7 October 1990, p. 17 ,illustrated

Faibisovich, Moscow: Regina Gallery, 2001, p. 40, illustrated; p. 129, listed

Initially a student at the Moscow Architectural Institute, Faibisovich turned to painting ignited by a talent and passion for both photography and drawing. He was particularly impressed by the work of the American Photorealist artist Richard Estes, which he saw at the 1975 exhibition of American art held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Combining his love for both artforms, Faibisovich’s paintings reach across photorealism into both the abstract and quotidian capturing the daily life in the Soviet Union.

In That Is the Question (1987) the focal point centres on a question mark formed by the shadows cast from an unseen window projected on an empty sofa bed. In the upper left a fragment from Winter Sunshine (1986) from the Moscow Suburban Electric Train series can be seen. The fragment is out of focus and invokes a sense of enigma by drawing a narrative arc between the quotidian repetition of the commute and the empty home.