ARTIST: Nikolay Kuk (Russian, New Hampshire, 1934 - ???)
TITLE: Portrait of Woman
YEAR: 2007
MEDIUM: oil on canvas. Canvas applied to board.
CONDITION: Few minor paint losses. No visible inpaint under UV light.
ART SIZE: 28 x 28 inches / 71 x 71 cm
FRAME SIZE: unframed (In-House framing available)
SIGNATURE: lower right
ATTENTION: This lot is located at our Mamaroneck, NY office.
CATEGORY: old antique vintage painting for auction sale online
AD: ART WANTED: Consign, Trade In, Cash Offer
USEFUL INFO ABOUT ART IS ON OUR SOCIAL MEDIA:     
SKU#: 132042
US Shipping $75 + insurance.

BIOGRAPHY:
Nikolay Kuk was born in Moscow, Russia in 1934 in the family with the history of Construction Engineering. His Grand-grand was in charge of Engineering and construction fleet ships for Peter the Great, Russian Czar. Another relative owned the train-carts building plant in Omsk in 19th century, when railroad was invented.Women in the family (Palchikov's) were well-known pianists. One of them was the first teacher of the composer Peter Chaikovsky. Several members of this family were opera singers during beginning of 20th Century Artistic splash in Russia.The works of Russian artist Nikolay Kuk provide a mythical contrast to the neat-looking New England Congregational churches, Colonial homes and pastoral landscapes one finds in abundance throughout the Monadnock region, where he has been living this summer.The style of art that Kuk has embraced and fought for throughout his career as an artist is Suprematism, founded by Kazimir Malevich in the early 20th century and one of the earliest and most radical developments in abstract art according to Kuk.The term Suprematism is derived from Malevich's belief that Suprematist art would be superior to all the art of the past, and that it would lead to the "supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts." In his book, "Suprematism" Malevich states the core concept of Suprematism: "Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth."From 1942 to 1953, Kuk attended Moscow Secondary School and later served in the Air Defense of the Nordic Navy for the former Soviet Union. He then studied at the Moscow Construction Institute to be a construction engineer and then at the Moscow Industrial Technical Centre, where he specialized in ceramics, paint production and waxes. His creative career started in 1959 when his goal, he said, was to create 20 to 30 contour pencil drawings "in order to train [my] hand."