SHIMON OKSHTEYN (1951 2020) Smoking Hand

Sale 2696 - Lot 152

Price Realized: $ 18,750

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000

SHIMON OKSHTEYN (1951 - 2020)
Smoking Hand.

Oil and pencil on canvas, 1984. 1016x1067 mm; 40x42 inches. Signed and dated lower right.

Provenance
Private collection, New Jersey.

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Additional Details

Shimon Okshteyn was a Ukrainian born artist and graduate of the prestigious Odessa School of Art. After immigrating to the United States in 1979, he was able to establish a strong presence in the contemporary art scene with representation by Eduard Nakhamkin Fine Arts, a leading gallery in the Russian art scene at the time. His works are now held in the permanent collections of major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Most well-known for his hyperrealistic pencil drawings and oil paintings of the 2000's, his early works lean into surrealism, using motifs of masquerade and costume to portray his interpretation of the modern woman. The present still-life was created the same year as portraits titled Call Girl and Cover Girls in which the same hat, heels, fingerless lace gloves and cigarette are featured. As Donald Kuspit stated "Okshteyn's still lifes—objects whose life has been stilled—not only explore the boundary between ordinary objects and poetic objects—non-art and found art—but between aesthetics and erotics."