Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1088861
7 JAMES BUTTERWICK'S 61-work TEFAF exhibition is one of the largest Bogomazov shows ever staged – encompassing eight oils, one lithograph, one gouache and and 51 drawings. Sixteen of these are studies for his last major work, the triptych Sawyers, and are contextualised by a specially commissioned reconstruction of the triptych's left-hand section. This remained unpainted when Bogomazov died from tuberculosis in June 1930. The earliest work in the TEFAF exhibition dates from 1908: a small Divisionist oil Portrait of a Young Girl, probably Bogomazov's future wife Wanda Monastyrska (1888-1982), whom he had just met at art school in Kiev. Bogomazov had spent the previous summer in Crimea with Alexis Grichenko and Vladimir Denisov, fellow-students in the Kiev studio of Sergei Svetoslavsky. They rented a wooden house in Vorontsovsky Park just outside Alupka, 8 miles south-west of Yalta, and sketched from dawn till dusk. Bogomazov thereupon left for Moscow, studying under Konstantin Yuon and Fyodor Rerberg (alongside Malevich), before returning to Kiev in 1908 to participate in the city's first Modernist exhibition, Zveno ('The Link'). In Summer 1911, after graduating from art school, Bogomazov continued his travels – catching a train north to Karelia on what was purportedly an assignment for the left-leaning daily Kievskaya Mysl, one of Tsarist Russia's best- selling provincial newspapers. The trip yielded a number of romantic, White Night drawings and watercolours of scenic highlights near Vyborg – including Monrepos Park, the three-towered Olavinlinna Castle in Savonlinna, and the island- dotted Lake Saimaa... whose 'fairy-tale beauty' had been extolled by Maxim Gorky (another Kievskaya Mysl contributor) when he fled there after the 1905 Revolution. The lake likewise influenced the romantically inclined artist to dedicate the drawing, shown here at TEFAF, to his future wife. Bogomazov rendered the 'murmuring' leaves and branches above Lake Saimaa by using freer brushwork than in other drawings, whose linear precision (and enigmatic mood) sometimes nod towards Aubrey Beardsley. Another Western black-and-white influence, if a 1912 lithograph of a Woman by a Samovar is anything to go by, was Félix Vallotton. Left-hand Drive TEFAF 2019 hosts an unprecedented overview of Bogomazov's career By Simon Hewitt Portrait of A Young Girl (Wanda Monastyrska), 1908 Portrait of Wanda, 1907-08 Oil on canvas 41.5 x 33.5 cm Private collection, Moscow