Constantin Troitsky's "Landscape of Longvy."
Stashed away in the attic of a large, pre-revolutionary building on Ligovsky Prospect is an Aladdin's cave of Russian contemporary art.
Canvases by post-modern painters Vadim Grigoryev, Konstantin Troitsky, Alexander Krylov, Victor Trofimov, Alexander Borkov, and Sergei Sergeyev -- all well-known painters in St Petersburg -- are stacked against the walls.
These are probably the works of tomorrow's great Russian masters. Subdued by Communism, they surfaced during Perestroika and have resumed the lost tradition of Russian experimentation in avant-garde art which was suppressed from the 1920s.
The collection belongs to a group of five wealthy Russian collectors who sponsor their work, buy the artist's paintings and often sell them on. These people, property developers and businessmen, are today's modern art patrons -- the pre-revolutionary industrialists Morozov and Mermantov before them.
But the attic is not a dusty, musty place full of cob-webs and memories. It is a smart, modern art gallery, one of the best in town and open to the public.
Art Collegium was founded in 1991, although the idea had already taken root in the minds of a group of artists in 1989. Over the course of the next three years the gallery became a coordinated exhibition center which has since organized and exhibited works of post-modernists in the Russian Museum.
The exhibition center has regularly shown works by these talented contemporary artists abroad in Aachen and Baden-Baden, Germany; Eponay, France; Clevedon and Cheltenham, England; Porvo, Finland and in Tokyo.
Natalya Demidova, one of the five partners, explained, "We try to create an atmosphere not only of an art gallery, but also of an artists' workshop.
"The president of the gallery is a collector and helps the artists. Part of the collection here is for sale, and works range from $200 to $2,000. Of the five people who run this venture, two are artists and dealers, the others have their own business interests."
I have chosen to take the works of two artists who are like chalk and cheese in their styles and treatment of subjects. Both the works of Konstantin Troitsky and Alexander Krylov are regularly shown at Art Collegium. Troitsky's work is distorted and places greater emphasis on space rather than subject.
He is influenced by Flemish sensuality and giantism, Van Gogh's color, Delvoe's rational and ironic surrealism, and the descriptiveness of Camus' Algerian period.
Troitsky is more philosopher than typical painter and his works are instantly individual and recognizable. He is interested in portraying background objects and shadows as his subjects, and everything seems in reverse. Trees and horizons are the focus of attention, while what many artists would consider the central subjects are ignored or made indistinct. You will either like or hate the wishy-washy, indistinct style of this artist.
Bolder and more striking are the surreal works of Alexander Krylov. Born in Leningrad in 1965, he started out as a jeweler and then worked carving wood and etching glass. Today he works as a full-time painter with his paintings being exhibited both in Russia and abroad.
His paintings are bold, fantastic and almost extra-terrestrial. He is fascinated by ceramic pots, teapots with spouts, and gives the surface of each one a different texture, almost a lunar landscape in its roughness, in contrast to the invitingly smooth interiors in blue-green hues.
Alexander Krylov "Still Life."