Sotheby’s and Christie’s will be holding it’s Russian sale in New York this week.  The auction houses are hoping the Russian market will finally return to strength after the financial crisis did so much damage to Russian bank accounts. London is also exhibiting confidence in the Russian market, Georgina Adam reports in the Financial Times:

A new Russian art gallery, Aktis, has just opened in the heart of St James’s, London, the brainchild of two young Russians, Iana Kobeleva and Anna Chalova . Kobeleva comes from an art background – she previously worked for the Moscow World Fine Art Fair – while Chalova comes from a financial background. While London now has a few Russian art galleries, they mainly specialise in very contemporary art; Aktis will show more established artists who have worked in exile since 1900, covering two periods, 1920s-1940s and 1960s-1980s. The gallery opened this week with a show of drawings, paintings and constructed works by the non-conformist artist Vladimir Yankilevsky, born in 1938.

The gallery will also show secondary market works by names such as Poliakoff, Chagall, Soutine and Lanskoy. “We will focus on Russian artists with an established place in the history of art,” says Kobeleva, “and we hope to enable the Russian audience to rediscover its roots.”

The Art Market: Phillips Slick Bric Auction (Financial Times)