The Russian art market has roared ahead in 2007, fueled by tycoons intent on repatriating their cultural heritage

Whether tsarist bauble or nonconformist painting, Russian art has been on the fast track in 2007, fueled in great part by natural resource tycoons intent on repatriating their cultural heritage. At Christie’s London sale of Russian art in June, The Rainbow – a serene landscape by Konstantin Somov – set a new world record for a Russian painting at auction when it sold for $7,327,952.

The sale total exceeded $35 million, and Christie’s broke down the buyers by country of origin. Not surprisingly 70 percent were Russian, 20 percent European, and only 5 percent American. Later this month, a recently uncovered Fabergé egg – estimate $12 to $18 million – promises to set the record for a Russian object of any type.

Russian buying power was further demonstrated in September by the cancellation of Sotheby’s London sale of the important art collection of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya. With the avowed intention of returning the paintings and decorative arts to Russia, Alisher Usmanov had used part of his fortune from ferrous metals and investments to purchase the collection outright before the sale.

The Guardian newspaper in England commented at the time, “Yesterday’s purchase comes as Russia’s oligarchs are keener than ever to demonstrate their patriotic credentials before parliamentary elections in December and a presidential poll in March.” Although a sale cancellation is an extremely rare event in the auction world, it parallels the 2004 purchase of the entire Forbes collection of Fabergé [see sidebar] by another Russian billionaire.

It’s not just the big two – Sotheby’s and Christie’s – that benefit from the new wealth emerging behind the former Iron Curtain. Other auctioneers offering Russian artworks profit from the trickle-down effect, as well. Shock filled the saleroom at Heritage Auction Galleries’ art sale in Dallas last month when a phone bidder in Moscow won Konstantinovich Aivazovsky’s mystical 1886 painting Pushkin at the Water’s Edge for $1.61 million, against competition on the floor and Internet.

Born in Russia and raised in the United States, Gene Shapiro has just completed the first sale at his new auction gallery in Stamford, Conn., with offerings of Russian, European, and American art. In an interview with Style Century Magazine, he said, “A lot of works are 19th century, but the most interesting thing right now in the Russian art market – what people are collecting more and what is increasing in value – is nonconformist art, art of the Soviet period … that was not done with government approval.”

“A lot of those artists are now being collected, gallery shows are being dedicated to them, and the prices for the works have gone up dramatically. In my October sale, some of the strongest pieces [were] by nonconformist artists. You can see works by Vasily Sitnikov and Eugene Rukhin in this sale; those two are very important artists.”

Shapiro continued, “In the past couple of years, everyone has been watching as the Russian art market moved up, but in some ways you can say that the market was undervalued for a while. These artists who are bringing such big prices, they are really important artists. Maybe in the West, we didn’t know about them as much, but Russians growing up in Russia were aware of their work.’

“So I don’t think it’s purely speculative. Russia is getting back on its feet and reclaiming its own heritage. The Russian economy in general is good because the price of oil is strong. There are many new millionaires and billionaires, and a lot of them are collecting art.”

Information about Shapiro’s past and future auctions can be found at www.geneshapiro.com. For collectors interested in keeping up to date in the field, Shapiro recommends logging on to www.izo.com, an English-language blog pertaining to the Russian art market.

Stephen Gass of Trinity Fine Arts also offers live auctions of Russian, European, and American art in Stamford, Conn., with bidding in the saleroom and online. In a recent interview, he pointed out, “The auction world has changed literally overnight with the advent of auction houses having the ability to sell things in new ways.”

“The process is more that just show up, get your paddle, bid — and beyond even absentee bids and phone bids. Now you also can bid online through LiveAuctioneers and eBay Live, where you’re actually sitting in your bathrobe in the Ukraine and you’re bidding against somebody in Stamford – live time. That has opened up the entire world as a marketplace.”

“LiveAuctioneers works in conjunction with eBay, and visually, the auction will appear live on your computer. You’ll be able to see what is going on through a window, and you are able to bid right then and there. You’ll be able to see the hammer go down.”

Gass said, “There are definite trends in the Russian art market, with a real emphasis on the repatriation of culture. There is a movement towards Russian contemporary art works – it is phenomenal. The pieces that are put up on the auction site – in many cases, these artists are alive and actually exhibiting in galleries in Russia. The prices that they are commanding are astronomical. It’s cutting-edge artwork, and it’s going for huge money.

With respect to strategies employed to accommodate bidders worldwide, he noted, “You have to be very aware of international time zones. Let’s say there are 60 lots of Russian artwork and an 8-hour difference. The auction starts at noon, it’s 8 p.m. over there, so the Russian art should come up first. Then you drop back in time zones across Europe. American artwork comes at the end.”

By consulting LiveAuctioneers.com and using the free archive search, it is easy to track what Russian paintings have been selling for in recent auctions, including those of Trinity Fine Arts and Gene Shapiro. Christie’s and Sotheby’s beautifully illustrated catalogs are also excellent references, with well-researched entries on everything from icons to porcelain to modern paintings.

While the Hillwood Museum [see sidebar] is rich in fine and decorative art from the tsarist era, the holdings at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., include 1,100 works in the George Riabov Collection, which dates from the 14th century to the present, and 17,000 works in the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union 1956-1986. For more information, visit www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu.