Our new favorite source to quote from is The Moscow Times. They went to Sotheby’s traveling exhibition of works from their upcoming New York sales of Russian and Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art:

The bulk of the show is dedicated to 11 Russian paintings from the 19th and early 20th century. Chief among them are two works by the “Russian Turner” Ivan Aivazovsky, a historical painting by symbolist Mikhail Nesterov and an impressionistic landscape by official Soviet painter Isaak Brodsky. This last was something of a find. “The collector wanted to sell,” explained Sotheby’s Russian specialist Jo Vickery, “because for some reason he decided it might be a Monet. When we received a photograph, we saw immediately it was a Brodsky — a charming, captivating work, very famous, but nobody knew where it was.”

Western modern and contemporary art is represented, among others, by two Andy Warhol prints and an Edvard Munch painting of moored boats, but far and away the highlight is Alberto Giacometti’s bronze sculpture “Cat,” which would grace just about any museum the world over. [ . . . ]

There are smaller gems to be found in the Russian contemporary section as well. In particular, Sots Art co-founder Alexander Kosopalov’s “Lenin Coca-Cola” is a classic example of the genre where unofficial artists repeated Soviet slogans and images to absurdity or juxtaposed them with Pop Art symbols; here the revolutionary leader is depicted as if on a soft-drink advertisement with a “signature” as if he had endorsed it.

Sotheby’s One-Day Show Has Much to Marvel At (The Moscow Times)