Shchukin

http://www.galleryshchukin.com/ The major fields of activity of the gallery are contemporary art, modern art, and, first of all, actual art.

Gallery SHCHUKIN is an international project with a representative office in Moscow and gallery exhibition space in Paris and New York. In continuous quest for new names, Gallery Shchukin works both with prominent contemporary artists and promising young authors. Among the most renowned painters, this gallery co-operates with such laureates of international prizes and permanent exhibit participant

s as David Datuna, Sasha Semenov, Andrey Shchelokov, Aladdin Garunov, Vladimir Migachev, Natalia Zaloznaya, Igor Tishin and others. Gallery Shchukin invests in art, performs expert appraisal of works of art, supports and promotes painters, consults collectors, implements significant high-level international art projects, and participates in art fairs globally, from the USA to China. The founder of Gallery Shchukin, the collector Nikolay Shchukin, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst by training and a former practitioner. Presently, Mr Shchukin works on the universal concept of psychology and sociology of art. The Moscow representative office of Gallery Shchukin was established primarily to familiarize the Russian audience with celebrated and young artists this Gallery has been working with, and to carry out large-scale socially significant educational and museum projects in this part of the world.

03/25/2025

MARCH 25: AIDAN SALAKHOVA — THE ARTIST WHO SLASHED THROUGH ORTHODOXY WITH MARBLE, VEILS, AND UNFORGIVABLE TRUTH

Aidan Salakhova doesn’t ask permission.
She carves it out of stone.

In a world of glossy pretenders and pseudo-provocations, she walks into the room with a veil, a block of marble, and a grin that knows you’re already uncomfortable.

Because her art?
It’s not decoration.
It’s a trap.

You think you’re looking at beauty.
But you’re standing in front of a scalpel.

WHO MADE AIDAN SALAKHOVA?

Was it Moscow’s cold gray weight, pressing down on anyone who dares to speak in metaphors that matter?

Was it her father, Tahir Salakhov, a Soviet art titan whose looming presence offered both legacy and resistance?

Was it the Islamic world, with its centuries of architecture, mysticism, censorship, and buried goddesses?

Or was it Aidan herself, who knew that to carve a woman into the stone is not to worship her—it’s to confront every myth that tried to erase her.

Because this isn’t feminism with a sticker on it.
This is sculptural rebellion soaked in erotic mysticism and geopolitical blasphemy.

THE LANGUAGE OF STONE AND BLOOD

She works in black and white, because nuance is for cowards.

Her veils are transparent and suffocating, both seductive and suffocating.

Her figures are archetypes of the forbidden, each one whispering:
“I’m sacred. I’m profane. And you can’t do a damn thing about it.”

Her pieces don’t beg for understanding.
They dare you to misread them.

AND THEN THE CENSORSHIP CAME
Venice Biennale.

Salakhova’s sculptures of veiled forms, part of the Russian Pavilion, were removed. Quietly. Shamefully.

Too religious.
Too sexual.
Too political.

In other words, too real.

The Russian Ministry of Culture, in all its brittle vanity, couldn’t handle the fact that a woman with a chisel was making them look like trembling patriarchal fossils.

She didn’t protest.
She documented.

The censorship became the art.

The silence became the scream.

THE SCULPTOR OF ABSENT GODDESSES

Salakhova doesn’t just work with marble.
She resurrects what was buried.

Women erased from history.

Bodies reduced to symbols.

Desire painted as shame.

Spirituality stripped

03/14/2025

MARCH 13: HANS BELLMER—THE ARTIST WHO TURNED OBSESSION INTO OBJECTS

(No Filters. No Excuses. Just Flesh, Fractured and Reassembled, Staring Back at You.)

Hans Bellmer did not sculpt beauty.
He built things that should not exist.

He didn’t paint ideals.
He assembled bodies like broken toys.

And when the world looked away, disgusted?
Bellmer kept going.

THE BLUEPRINT OF A FIXATION
1933. Germany.

The N***s are demanding perfection—
The ideal body. The pure bloodline. The flawless form.

Bellmer takes one look at this obsession with order and responds with chaos.
• He builds a doll.
• He breaks it apart.
• He rebuilds it.
• He photographs it.

This isn’t child’s play.
This is sabotage.

Because if the world wants purity, Bellmer gives them deformity.
If the world wants obedient bodies, he gives them bodies that won’t sit still.

THE DOLL—A BLUEPRINT FOR DESIRE AND CONTROL

Bellmer’s Doll Series (La Poupée) wasn’t about childhood innocence.
• Legs that shouldn’t be there.
• Twisted torsos, warped and repeated.
• Bodies made of too many parts—or not enough.

They are not statues.
They are not mannequins.
They are things that were built to be rearranged.

Because that’s what obsession does.
It rearranges.
It repeats.
It refuses to end.

BELLINGERENT, EXILED, ERASED, REVIVED
• The N***s banned his work.
• The French welcomed him as a Surrealist.
• The world never knew what to do with him.

His art wasn’t just disturbing.
It was too personal.

Too close to something we don’t talk about.
Too explicit about what happens when control and power and desire get tangled up.

And now?

His work sits in museums.
His name is in art history books.

Because that’s how it works.

The things we try to erase always come back.

And Hans Bellmer never stopped constructing.

03/10/2025

Since last weekend, when we crossed paths with the infamous Anna Delvey at a group show in Tribeca, we decided to pay tribute to con artists who have forced the art world to confront its own illusions.

Meet Mark Landis—the man who pulled off one of the most bizarre art scams in history without ever making a dime.

For over 30 years, he donated fake paintings to museums, walking in as a grieving heir, a priest, a generous benefactor. No elaborate forgeries. No aged canvases. Just cheap acrylics, dollar-store frames, and a good sob story.

And the museums? They took them. Again and again. Because in the end, they weren’t just collecting art—they were collecting narratives.

Landis never faced charges. Instead, he got a documentary—Art and Craft—immortalizing his trickery.

The real scam? That the institutions who claim to define authenticity got played by a man with a Walmart paint set.

03/09/2025

MARCH 9: ERIC FISCHL—THE ARTIST WHO RIPPED THE MASK OFF SUBURBIA AND SHOWED US THE MONSTERS LURKING BENEATH

(No Illusions. No Censorship. Just Raw, Unfiltered Glimpses into the Dark Corners of the American Dream.)

Eric Fischl didn’t just paint pictures; he exposed the rot festering behind white picket fences.

He wasn’t interested in heroic figures or abstract fantasies.
He was obsessed with the messy, uncomfortable truths of everyday life, the secrets people whispered about but never dared to confront.

THE SUBURBAN NIGHTMARE
• Born: March 9, 1948, in New York City.

Fischl grew up in the suburbs of Long Island, a place where appearances were everything, and darkness simmered beneath the surface.

THE ART OF EXPOSURE

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Fischl’s work helped reinvest the traditional medium of painting with contemporary relevance. He became well known for psychologically intense paintings, where extraordinary dreamlike scenes take place in suburban settings. Unflinchingly focused on the subject of human relationships, Fischl depicts moments when something potentially disastrous or taboo is on the verge of happening.

THE LEGACY OF TRUTH-TELLING

Fischl’s work is a relentless confrontation, a refusal to let society hide behind facades. He digs into the wounds of the American Dream, not to heal them but to ensure we never forget the pain. His art is a testament to the power of unflinching observation, a mirror reflecting the truths we often choose to ignore.

03/08/2025

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) – The Architect of Memory

Born in postwar Germany, Anselm Kiefer confronts history head-on, refusing to let the past fade into forgetfulness. His massive, weighty works—constructed from lead, ash, straw, and scorched books—serve as physical manifestations of trauma, myth, and memory. Influenced by poets like Paul Celan and conceptualists like Joseph Beuys, Kiefer’s art wrestles with Germany’s reckoning with its N**i past, European history, and the cyclical nature of destruction and rebirth. His infamous early performances, where he donned a N**i uniform to expose the persistence of fascist shadows, set the tone for a career defined by discomfort, excavation, and brutal honesty.

From his haunting paintings like Margarete and Shulamith to his sprawling, ruinous studio in Barjac, France, Kiefer constructs landscapes of history that refuse to be ignored. Today, his work is housed in the world’s most prestigious institutions—monuments to a history that never really left.

03/07/2025

MARCH 7: PIET MONDRIAN—THE ARTIST WHO DECONSTRUCTED REALITY INTO LINES AND COLORS

(No Curves. No Chaos. Just Grids, Primary Hues, and the Pursuit of Universal Harmony.)

Piet Mondrian didn’t just paint; he reduced the world to its essence.

He saw the mess of existence and thought:
“What if we could strip it all down? What if we could find the core?”

So, he did.

THE JOURNEY FROM REPRESENTATION TO ABSTRACTION
• Early Life: Born March 7, 1872, in Amersfoort, Netherlands, Mondrian was introduced to art by his father, a drawing teacher, and his uncle, a painter.
• Initial Works: His early paintings were rooted in the Dutch landscape, depicting windmills, fields, and rivers in a naturalistic style.
• Shift to Abstraction: Influenced by Cubism and his spiritual studies in Theosophy, Mondrian began to abstract natural forms, leading to his distinctive style of straight lines and primary colors.

THE DE STIJL MOVEMENT
• Co-Founder: In 1917, Mondrian co-founded De Stijl (“The Style”), a Dutch artistic movement advocating for pure abstraction and simplicity, focusing on essential forms and colors.
• Neoplasticism: Mondrian’s art evolved into Neoplasticism, characterized by a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the use of primary colors, aiming to express universal beauty.

THE LEGACY OF ORDER

Mondrian’s work wasn’t just about art; it was about a philosophy. He believed that by reducing art to its basic elements, one could achieve a form of universal harmony.

His influence permeates not only painting but also architecture, design, and fashion, embodying the quest for order amidst chaos.

03/05/2025

MARCH 5: GIOVANNI BATTISTA TIEPOLO—THE PAINTER WHO MADE REALITY BEND TO HIS WILL

(No Gravity. No Structure. Just Light, Spectacle, and the Art of the Impossible.)

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo did not paint ceilings.

He destroyed them.

He turned them into gateways, into open air, into divine illusions so overwhelming that no one ever thought to look at what was actually holding the roof up.

He was not a man.
He was a magician.

A conjurer with a brush, making entire palaces levitate, turning rooms into visions, dissolving walls with the sheer force of color and movement.

His art never sat still—it soared, swirled, burst, defied gravity itself.

And that’s why he still matters.

Because Tiepolo’s world wasn’t painted.

It was conjured.

THE TRICK: HOW TIEPOLO ERASED ARCHITECTURE

Venice in 1696 was already a city of illusions.

It floated on water.
It was ruled by money but worshipped spectacle.
It made its own myths and lived inside them.

And Tiepolo?

He understood the assignment.

The Baroque was already a performance, but Tiepolo took it further:
• Ceilings didn’t just have paintings—they opened into heaven itself.
• Figures didn’t just sit in frames—they floated above you, looking down, daring you to believe in something bigger than yourself.
• Light didn’t just illuminate—it flooded the room, pouring in from skies that never existed.

He took foreshortening—the Renaissance trick of making things look like they’re moving toward you—and pushed it past the breaking point.

Look up at a Tiepolo ceiling.

Angels aren’t placed in the composition—they’re diving straight at you.
Clouds aren’t painted in the background—they’re about to pull you in.
Every line, every brushstroke says the same thing: “This is real.”

Except, of course, it isn’t.

That’s the joke. That’s the genius.

03/04/2025

MARCH 4: THE POSTMODERN SPIRAL PULLS IN SIR HENRY RAEBURN—THE MAN WHO PAINTED SCOTLAND INTO IMMORTALITY

(No Straight Paths. No Fixed Narratives. Art as Myth, Identity, and the Illusion of Power.)

Henry Raeburn didn’t paint portraits.

He built monuments.

Not the kind made of stone, standing in the center of a city, worn down by time and pigeons and apathy.
Not the kind sculpted out of bronze, standing on horseback, staring into history with a blank gaze.

Raeburn’s monuments were made of faces.

The faces of Scotland, frozen in oil, posed against dark backdrops, staring at you like they already know something you don’t.

And that’s the trick, isn’t it?

The past only exists because we refuse to let it die.
And Raeburn?

He made sure it never could.
THE SCOTTISH IDENTITY PROJECT

Raeburn’s work is a contradiction.
• He painted portraits of power, but his brush made them feel human.
• He painted portraits of wealth, but they don’t scream opulence—they scream presence.
• He painted portraits of men who ruled Scotland, but in a way that makes you wonder: were they ruling anything at all, or just pretending?

Take “The Skating Minister”—his most famous work.
• A man in black, ice-skating across a frozen loch.
• Composed, dignified, effortless.
• But also? Completely absurd.

Because what is power, if not a man in a stiff, formal suit trying to stay upright on the ice?

And what is history, if not a frozen moment, captured for the illusion of eternity?

THE FINAL PORTRAIT: THE SPIRAL NEVER ENDS

By the time Raeburn died in 1823, his portraits had already won.

His subjects—most of them long buried—are still here.

They stare at us from the walls of museums.
They hold our gaze, unblinking.
They survived.

Because that’s what art does.

And that’s what Raeburn understood better than most:

Immortality isn’t about power.
It isn’t about wealth.
It’s about who gets to tell the story.

And Raeburn?

He made sure he was the one holding the brush.

03/01/2025

BALTHUS: THE LAST PAINTER WHO GOT AWAY WITH MURDER

A brushstroke held like a whispered sin,
Drenched in candlelight, cold within.
Not art, but crime, that walked away—
Framed in gold, too slick to stay.

THE BLOODLINE OF AN ARTISTIC OUTLAW

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola.

Not Balthus.
Not yet.

Born into privilege, intellect, wealth.
A family where art and arrogance were served with breakfast.

His mother was a painter. His father, a critic.
His godfather? Rainer Maria Rilke.
His childhood? Paris, Berlin, Geneva—soaking up the ghosts of dead geniuses.

He wasn’t trying to prove anything.
He was born thinking he already won.

THE PAINTER WHO DIDN’T BELONG IN HIS OWN TIME

By the 1930s, the art world was burning with revolution.

Picasso was ripping bodies apart with Cubism.
Duchamp was putting toilets in galleries and calling them art.
Kandinsky was painting sound.

And Balthus?

He turned his back on all of it.

He painted slow, meticulous, eerie Renaissance-like scenes—
as if they’d been locked in some aristocrat’s attic for 400 years.

Too classical to be radical.
Too modern to be conservative.
Too beautiful to be ignored.
Too disturbing to be comfortable.

THE GIRLS: WHEN DOES PROVOCATION BECOME PREDATION?

And then, there were his girls.

Young.
Stretched out on chairs, daybeds, sofas.
Eyes closed.

Or worse—looking straight at you.

No movement. No pretense of innocence.
Just that uncomfortable, voyeuristic, eerie stillness.

His defenders called it “a study of adolescence.”
His critics called it “exploitation hiding behind a gold frame.”

And Balthus?

He didn’t care what you thought.

When asked to explain his work, he simply said:

“It is how I see. That is all.”

No justification.
No apology.
No shame.

Because Balthus didn’t care if his work made you uncomfortable.

He thrived on it.

02/26/2025

HONORÉ DAUMIER: THE MAN WHO DREW BLOOD

Honoré Daumier. The guy who painted the world like it actually smelled. You want soft pastels, idyllic sunsets, girls with parasols whispering about love? Go to hell. Or worse, go to Renoir. Daumier didn’t have time for the romance of the rich. His world was filthy, crooked, and cracked at the edges.

Daumier was the street reporter with a brush, the guy who saw Paris for what it was—a city stuffed to the rafters with scheming politicians, bloated aristocrats, and half-starved workers getting crushed under the boots of the so-called civilized. He was a war correspondent, only his battlefield was the courtroom, the parliament, the gutter.

You look at his paintings, and you feel it. The weight. The rot.

Take “The Third-Class Carriage.” Look at those people—crammed together. The old woman, bent and exhausted, a baby limp in her lap. The young man beside her, eyes dead, hands clenched. The light doesn’t shine, it leaks in, weak and defeated. No comfort, no beauty, just a quiet endurance that makes your chest feel tight.

And don’t even start on his lithographs.

Daumier’s caricatures weren’t just funny—they were loaded weapons. He tore apart the fat, sneering faces of politicians with ink and acid, made kings look like toads, made judges look like executioners in powdered wigs. The man did 20,000 drawings and each one had the force of a punch to the ribs.

The French government knew what he was doing, and they threw him in jail for it. Locked him up for six months for daring to call out the monarchy. Most men would’ve backed off after that. Daumier doubled down.

He was a goddamn assassin with a pen.

The tragedy? He was too good for his own time. People liked his caricatures, but they didn’t buy his paintings. He died half-blind, half-broke, buried in the shadows of the people he exposed. The art world only caught up when it was too late. That’s how it always works.

But here’s the thing: his work still stings. You look at his judges, his bloated bureaucrats, his starving crowds—and you see the same faces today. The same crooked bastards, the same rigged systems.

Daumier didn’t just capture his time. He captured ours.

Address

233 E 35th Street
New York, NY
10016

Telephone

+12127846684

Website

http://www.shchukin.fr/

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