Daria Khristova nee Chernenko
Department Director
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Lot 14*
Oleg Vassiliev(Russian, 1931-2013)Olga Mikhaïlovna et Natasha
Amended
3 – 24 October 2025, 12:00 CEST
Online, Paris, avenue Hoche€180,000 - €200,000
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Oleg Vassiliev (Russian, 1931-2013)
Olga Mikhaïlovna et Natasha
signé en cyrillique et daté « 1979 » (en bas à droite) ; également signé, titré, inscrit et daté (au verso)
huile sur toile
180 x 130cm (70 7/8 x 51 3/16in).
signed in Cyrillic and dated '1979' (lower right); further signed, titled, inscribed and dated (verso)
oil on canvas
signé en cyrillique et daté « 1979 » (en bas à droite) ; également signé, titré, inscrit et daté (au verso)
huile sur toile
180 x 130cm (70 7/8 x 51 3/16in).
signed in Cyrillic and dated '1979' (lower right); further signed, titled, inscribed and dated (verso)
oil on canvas
Footnotes
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Exhibited
Bern, Kunstmuseum, Ich Lebe - ich sehe, 11 June - 14 August, 1988
Literature
K. Meier-Rust, Warum das Moskauer Kulturleben trotzdem interessant ist, DU: Die Kunstzeitschrift, No.6, 1981, illustrated p.57
Exhibition catalogue,Ich Lebe - ich sehe, Kunstmuseum Bern, 1988, illustrated
K. Vassilieva, N. Kolodzei (eds.), Oleg Vassiliev: Memory Speaks, St.Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2004, p.46 illustrated
Oleg Vassiliev occupies a distinctive place among the artists of the Soviet nonconformist movement. Alongside his lifelong friend and collaborator Erik Bulatov, he explored the expressive potential of artistic dissent, whilst remaining committed to the rigorous training and traditions of classical painting. His meticulous realism is consistently underpinned by carefully considered spatial constructions, in which the canvas is divided into planes of light and colour. These formal strategies serve a single overriding purpose: to explore the concept of memory - not as passive recollection, but as a metaphysical experience.
For Vassiliev, memory is not a straightforward imprint of past events, it is selective, interpretive and imaginative. As he once remarked: Memory is not just an imprint, but a metaphysical, creative mystery: it selects and amplifies some things, erases or transforms others, embellishes, dramatizes... Memory is one of the most important themes for me. His work seeks to investigate the fragile and fluid relationship between past, present, and future - not as linear or separate, but as overlapping states of being.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Vassiliev had formulated the key tenets of his painterly language. These included a synthesis of photorealistic representation with abstract and geometric elements, as well as the bold use of spectral colour. These techniques are brought to the fore in his poignant double portrait of Natasha Bulatova and her mother-in-law, Olga Mikhailovna, a work that serves as both a personal commemoration and a philosophical meditation on the passage of time.
The painting depicts Natasha Bulatova, the wife of Erik Bulatov, and her former mother-in-law from an earlier marriage to the poet and writer Mikhail Sokovnin.
The first time I saw Natasha was while visiting my friend, writes Erik Bulatov. She was unwell, lying in bed with red hair, flushed cheeks, and a high fever. I was deeply struck by how pink and radiant she looked, despite her illness.
Bulatov recalls that after the death of his friend, Natasha remained in the home of her mother-in-law, where he and Oleg Vassiliev often visited her. A romance developed between Bulatov and Natasha Godzina during the winter of 1979 that ended in their marriage.
Both women are shown framed, Natasha within a stark black rectangle and Olga Mikhailovna within a circle, dramatically lit by a spotlight that seems to emanate from beyond the composition. This beam of light isolates and elevates their presence, invoking a spiritual quality reminiscent of Orthodox iconography. In this way, Vassiliev positions the women not simply as portraits, but as timeless figures suspended in memory.
The composition unfolds across three distinct spatial planes. At the centre is a contemplative female figure - Natasha, within whom another portrait is embedded. The layering of portraits evokes the way memory nests and refracts identities through time. Behind them stretches a soft, dreamlike forest landscape, rendered in warm, luminous tones of pink and violet. A small, childlike figure is barely visible in the distance, drawing the viewer into a moment of nostalgia - an allusion, perhaps, to the carefree innocence of childhood.
The formal complexity of the work is heightened by Vassiliev's dialogue with the Russian avant-garde. The stark black rectangles surrounding the women recall Malevich's Black Square, evoking themes of abstraction, reduction, and the limits of representation. Simultaneously, the figures themselves are rendered in a photorealistic manner, demonstrating Vassiliev's interest in bridging the figurative and the abstract. This duality is central to his practice: the tension between visibility and absence, clarity and ambiguity, figuration and formalism.
Ultimately, this double portrait is not merely a representation of two individuals. It is a carefully constructed portal into the past, where personal history intersects with collective memory, and where light becomes a metaphor for time, recollection, and loss. Vassiliev's use of light, soft, diffuse, golden, imbues the work with a sense of reverence and introspection. The painting seems to exist on the threshold between the physical and the spiritual, the seen and the remembered.
Saleroom notices
Starting bid amended