Three works by Burliuk are led by On the Raft, a monumental, two.panel composition depicting the grand development of mankind’s artistic creativity (est. $400/600,000). Moving from right to left, Burliuk traces the evolution of human civilization through allegorical symbols. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and Roman figures of Romulus and Remus allude to early cultures. The man on the left, dressed in a toga, hands the man in the center a scroll and torch, symbols of justice and law, while a guitar and bowl of fruit lay on the raft below, symbols of music and art, respectively. The crouching woman holds an urn with a bald eagle, representing the possibility of the United States as heir to the great civilizations of the past.

Following the success of the Collection of Ruth Ford & Charles Henri Ford in Sotheby’s April 2010 Russian Art sale in New York, which set a new artist record for Pavel Tchelitchew when Portrait of Ruth Ford sold for nearly $1 million, the November Important Russian Art sale will offer seven additional works by the artist from the Collection. These works are led by Portrait of Charles Henri Ford with Pitcher, executed in 1933, two years after Ford and Tchelitchew first met in Paris (est. $150/200,000). In Portrait of Charles Henri Ford with Pitcher, he presents Ford as being brilliantly lit from within. Such treatment prefigures Tchelitchew’s later experimentations with the interaction of light, anatomy and the cosmos in his Interior Landscapes and Space Compositions of the 1940s and 50s.

A group of exquisite works from the Collection of Gordon P. Getty includes important works by Konstantin Yuon, Konstantin Somov, Konstantin Gorbatov, Alexander Benois and Sergei Sudeikin. In Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra in Winter, Yuon sought to convey the poetic charm of the Russian provinces (est. $250/350,000). This monastery complex north of Moscow became one of Yuon’s favorite subjects, and the present work is characterized by a melancholic nostalgia, with patches of color breaking through a bleak winter landscape. Somov’s Les Sylphides captures a performance of the early-twentieth century ballet of the same name, a romantic show that formally premiered with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 (est. $120/180,000). Somov executed a small number of ballet miniatures between 1930 and 1932, but his return to theatrical scenes with Les Sylphides came shortly after the death of Diaghilev, whom the artist considered both a close friend and source of inspiration.

The 4 November sale also features three strong works from leading Socialist Realist painters, including Yuri Pimenov. The artist’s cityscapes rank among the most highly sought-after images of the Soviet era. His representations of everyday scenes unfolding against Moscow’s evolving skyline offer a unique commentary on the extraordinary socio-economic changes taking place. In First of May Celebration, 1950, as in many of Pimenov’s most famous paintings, men are absent from the scene (est. $400/600,000). Female workers are represented in monumental scale above the streets of Moscow, highlighting the important role they play in a productive society; they hoist the Soviet flag in celebration of the First of May, also known as May Day or International Workers’ Day.