Very Very Magazine - April 2008
Anna Hunter runs the Belgravia Gallery in Mayfair where a recent show featuring soviet-era propaganda met with unprecedented success. Our interest piqued, W went
along to find out what Anna could tell us about Russian Art in London...and who is buying it.
W: You have now put on several Russian-themed shows at your gallery Anna, can you tell us how you go about meeting the artists themselves?
AH: Obviously I have made several trips over to Russia myself, particularly to St. Petersburg, but just recently a dear friend of ours named Tanya Tolstoy has been hugely
helpful in that respect. It was Tanya that first brought us into contact with Mr. Egorov and his wife Maria Goncharova, whom we featured on one of our Russian exhibitions. It was also Tanya who discovered a group of artists copying old masters at the State Hermitage Museum. It seems that they were all incredibly talented individuals but financially not that well off, so she took them under her wing and we helped sell some of their works here in London.
W: I believe you have also been exhibiting works of Soviet propaganda lately, can you tell us more about that?
AH: Yes, there has been a lot of interest in this area I must say. I studied politics at university so this subject also has particular relevance for me personally. In Stalin's
time, art had to be rather serious but after his death there were these much lighter, brighter colours being employed. We begin to see almost impressionist pieces featuring farmers standing beside their harvesting machines, jackets slung casually over their shoulders; this was a much subtler approach to propaganda, one that tells us a lot about the socio-political environment of the time.
W: Where are you sourcing these pieces from, are they still in Russian?
AH: I have someone who goes over to Russia specifically to search them out for me. Interestingly, even if I say to collectors that such works have been damaged, pencil-marked or frayed, they only seem to be drawn to them even more. There are literally buyers queuing up for original examples of Soviet propaganda now and it really excites me to see the speed with which this trend is developing.
W: Are you able to tell us to who you are selling the pieces?
AH: Not Russians but Americans mostly, also people of my age who originally read politics at university of course! Then there are the Mayfair hedge fund managers who appreciate the irony of works that show Lenin addressing the Winter Palace. For obvious reasons, given the nature of their jobs, they love the visual representation of capitalism versus communism.
W: How successful have your recent Russian shows been?
AH: In previous years, images of St. Petersburg and small Russian villages have gone down very well, this year however it was really all about the propaganda pieces. We sold out almost instantly. In the past the propaganda sold fairly well, but I thought it was a one-off. This year's results proved I was wrong.
W: What sort of prices are we talking about for the propaganda works?
AH: They typically start at around £1500 and go up to £15000. My instinct tells me that these may well be rather shrewd investments for the future too, as prices are only going to go up as demand increases.
W: What do you think is so appealing about these works in particular?
AH: First and foremost, they are intelligent pieces that really need to be read or interpreted if one is to fully understand the icons within them. These artists effectively deified the Communist Party and I've often thought how interesting it would be to compare early Renaissance paintings with these later propaganda images.
In both instances, their purpose was to instruct people on how to live their lives. Many also feature Trinitarian images, just one of the many ways in which the Communist Party attempted to portray itself as somehow transcendental, god-like even.
W: Fascinating stuff Anna, although I wonder how many of the hedge fund managers are able to read quite so deeply into the pieces they buy?!
