Meyerovich Gallery
20th Anniversary Celebration

Meyerovich Gallery is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and we’re commemorating this with an exciting fall season, presenting the following exhibitions:

Part I, Modern Art: “Picasso at Meyerovich” September 20 – November 20, 2006.
Twenty years ago, Meyerovich Gallery’s first exhibit was “Picasso: Rare Prints” which presented works from the artist’s estate. This fall Meyerovich Gallery will again join forces with Marina Picasso to make another memorable exhibition in San Francisco. “Picasso at Meyerovich” will include more than 60 rare etchings, lithographs, and linocuts from the 1920s to the 1970s. This exhibition will also present some of Picasso’s unique works on paper never seen on the West Coast. Most of the works in this show were part of Picasso’s personal collection and titled “Picasso’s Picasso.”

Part II, Contemporary Art: “Grisha Bruskin: Metamorphosis & Mysticism” November 2 – January 5, 2007.
Meyerovich Gallery is pleased to announce a major exhibition of paintings and sculptures by renowned Russian artist Grisha Bruskin, one of the most important and successful Russian artists in the world. Meyerovich Gallery has represented Grisha Bruskin for more than 15 years, and “Metamorphosis & Mysticism” will be our fourth exhibition of his works.

In celebration of Meyerovich Gallery’s 20th anniversary and the Grisha Bruskin exhibition we will have an opening night event on Thursday, November 9, 2006 at the gallery. This event will be hosted by Meyerovich Gallery together with the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco. The artist, Grisha Bruskin, and his wife Alexandra will attend this celebration.

Bruskin was born in 1945 in Moscow and received an art degree from the Art Department at the Moscow Textile Institute in 1968. The following year he became a member of the Soviet Artist’s Union and had three exhibitions—all of which were prematurely closed by Soviet authorities. As a part of the Soviet art underground in the 1970s and 1980s, Bruskin consistently challenged the political and social standards of Communist society and was persecuted by the government. After a very successful sale at the 1988 Sotheby’s Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art auction in Moscow—where six of Bruskin’s paintings sold for $1 million (USD), including the innovative figural painting, “Fundamental Lexicon”—Bruskin emerged from his charged environment and into the international arena. Subsequently, Bruskin immigrated to New York and began his career in the US. Since then, his work has been exhibited widely throughout the world.

One of the highlights of the show at Meyerovich Gallery will be an installation entitled Archeologist’s Collection, a multipart configuration of new bronze sculptures (6 inches to 36 inches) that form an almost museum-like display of what seem to be artifacts from the lost civilization of the 20th century Soviet Union. Each bronze, ranging from the fragmented body of a Soviet soldier to the shattered remains of a doctor and the figure of a broken but recognizable German Shepherd, is covered in matte white paint. Like rediscovered artifacts from the ruins of Pompeii, these objects become ghostly relics of a lost culture, place, and time. They also recall the ubiquitous use of plaster statuary in the USSR, where visual reminders of the state’s power could be found in every town square and park.

A second major body of new work included in the exhibition will be On the Edge, which comprises a group of bronze sculptures measuring from 10 inches to over 58 inches. These fascinating sculptures depict figures as they balance or step off columns. Metaphorically grounded “on the edge” of walking and sleeping, consciousness and non-consciousness, death and rebirth, the works’ stylized handsomeness conjures associations with romanticism, kitsch, and Socialist realism. Included with these sculptures is a group of paintings on canvas and paper that further explore these themes.

Also included in this exhibition is a group of new paintings specifically created for this exhibition, in addition to works from Bruskin’s earlier-period (1980s–90s) Alefbet and Metamorphoses series. In the 1980s, the mythological Book of Life, Alefbet, replaced symbolic scenarios with figures of the alphabet. Alefbet refers to the ancient Jewish tradition in which the alphabet is the image of a sacred knowledge. In Bruskin’s series, Alefbet and Metamorphoses, the alphabet is independent of any specific historical period. In each image, their ritual clothing and objects—kipot, talit, tefilin—are devoid of any characteristics of the past. Before us are the lexicon of ideal meanings that encompass the worlds of angels and demons.

However, the characters in Bruskin’s work are artistic images: always concrete and untranslatable into any other language, yet bearing a sacred wisdom that makes them open to endless interpretation. Their visibility, bordering on vulnerability, is to a great degree misleading, as the simplicity of a fable can often be misleading.

Grisha Bruskin is widely recognized for an oeuvre that deeply engages philosophy, history, and religion. “Bruskin creates cyclical depictions combining image with script in which Jewish spirituality and religiosity take on a compelling form for which there is no comparison in contemporary art” (Art of the 20th Century; Volume I; Taschen; 2005). Many of his works include paintings related to the esoteric literature of Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah. In 1999, Bruskin was selected to represent Russia with a permanent installation at the redesigned Reichstag, home to the German parliament, in Berlin. The artist has also had successful solo exhibitions at the following museums: State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow and State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg; Kunsthalle, Emden, and Judengasse Museum, Frankfurt on Main, Germany; Museo Nacional De Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; and others. Also, last year he was part of a very successful show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, “Russia! Nine Hundred Years of Masterpieces and Master Collections.”

The artist’s work is included in numerous public collections in the United States and Europe. Locally Bruskin’s works are in the collection of the de Young Museum in San Francisco. A significant number of articles, reviews, and publications have been written about the artist’s life and art. This includes the monograph Grisha Bruskin: Life Is Everywhere and Grisha Bruskin - Alefbet - Tapestry project, a catalog of his recent and very successful show at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

For additional information or visuals contact Alex Meyerovich at (415) 421-7171 or art@meyerovich.com.