Bidspirit auction | Vasily Shulzhenko ”The Courtyard of

Vasily Shulzhenko ”The Courtyard of My Childhood” Oil on Canvas - Signed by the artist lower right.  Year: 2000 Provenance: Gallery Label from Maya Polsky Gallery, Chicago, Illinois   Dimensions: 79” x 59”    Condition: The wooden slats of the frame are separating in the upper left corner. Minor loss of paint in the lower left corner and two spots of paint loss in the jacket of the second boy from the bottom on the left side. White residue to the lower right area.    Artist Bio: Vasily Shulzhenko (b. 1949, Moscow) studied from the age of thirteen at the Moscow Art High School and graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute in 1973. He works in a manner usually called grotesque realism, alternating smooth classical handling with heavy impasto, and cites the Northern Renaissance masters as his models. His subject is Russian provincial and village life — courtyards, bathhouses, communal interiors — rendered without flattery, though he frames the work as universal rather than topical, inviting the viewer to look inward rather than read it as political satire. He received the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Arts in 2012.