ALEXANDER LABAS (1900 – 1983)

The exhibition presents the works by famous Soviet artist Alexander Labas (1900-1983) who is one of the leading masters of the Society of Easel Painters. His creative oeuvre became a bright and an original phenomenon in fine arts of the 1920`s - beginning of the 1930`s. The exhibition includes 110 paintings and graphic works from the collection of the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, The Federal State Cultural Establishment Artistic and Literary Museum-Reserve, The Bahrusin State Museum of Theatrical Arts, The State Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, Ivanovo Regional Art Museum, The State Perm Art Gallery, as well as from the private collections.

The main part of the exhibition is the artist’s works of the 1920`s-1930`s, where the original fundamental distinctive features of the Society of Easel Painters aesthetics are found. Among them there is a keen interest to plastic findings of Russian and foreign avant-garde of the beginning of the XX century and aspiration to embody the intense rhythm and dynamics of modern world in expressive form of art.

The exhibition also includes an electronic catalog that gives viewers an opportunity to get acquainted with the works created by Labas in the postwar decades. One of the main characters of the artist’s works is a technique such as cars and airplanes, trams and Moscow subway escalators.

Shifting of forms and their unusual foreshortening gave the artist an opportunity to recreate a dizzying sense of space seen from window of rapidly hurtling train or a cockpit. At the same time, in the images that are dedicated to the latest technical innovations or future conquest of space, the author found his own poetic manner, consonant to his perception of the world. This feature of the artist’s works is especially clearly revealed in his portraits, landscapes and still-lifes, marked by emotional spirituality and subtle sense of color.