Spoils of The Revolution

A full page ad in one of Swedens biggest newspapers today brags about ”high prices at russian auction”. I would say that’s an understatement.

Sure, there is a lot of good russion art from the 19th century, such as that of the highly acclaimed Ilya Repin. But 200k euro for a painting of the Royal Palace in Stockholm by Aizazovsky is not only overprized, it’s simply stupid. The guy produced over 6.000 paintings during his lifetime, most of which are romantic moonlight-over-the-stormy-sea-stuff. He could hardly paint landscapes and often failed miserably at portraits.

Another 200k euro for a Pasternak is a little more reasonable, but still rather strange in my opinion. 150k euro for the comparatively unknown Harlamov, or Mailiavin is a lot of money.

There is obviously a strong market for Russian art right now. But it’s hard not to get the feeling that a lot of it is pure speculation. It’ll be interesting to see when the bubble bursts.