In recent years, Moscow saw several exhibitions of Alexander Labas (1900-1983), which seemed to present the oeuvre of this notable Russian artist in its fullest scope. However, the display hosted by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art reveals another facet of the artist’s creation — certainly, no one has seen such Labas yet.

The works on view were not intended for exhibiting and could appear isolated studies and sketches, but when put together, they form a self-contained cycle. A keen and measured eye of the collection’s keeper (the exhibition concept was elaborated by Raimonda Labas, widow of the artist’s son) managed to unite these works thematically as well as stylistically.

They demonstrate that, in Alexander Labas’s last years, his painting discovers new artistic quality. Somehow works of that period remind of the artist’s famous contemporary, Alexander Tyshler. Some watercolours and pastels refer to Claude Monet’s ‘Water-Lilies’, others to later pieces by Odilon Redon. These analogies bear no loans or quotations; they are results of an independent and consistent artistic process.

Much as Monet’s late Impressionism brought the master to the verge of lyrical abstraction, ‘cosmic fantasies’ bring Labas to non-figurative art. Fifty years after, it is clear that some of Labas’s pieces anticipate works by his younger contemporaries, such as Anatoly Zverev.

In his late oeuvre, Labas seems to turn again to the beginnings of his career. The central theme of his early works is aeronautics, the conquering of the atmosphere — as one of the contemporaries put it, Labas was ‘the austere painter of blades and propellers’. For a Soviet citizen of the 60s, space travelling embodied the same materialized dream as airships and flying machines, for Soviet people of the 30s. In this context, Labas stays true to his own views. However, the meaning of the space in his creation is not limited to this matter: ‘cosmic fantasies’ allow some internal freedom from the realism and give a powerful feeling of emotional flight.

From the memoirs of Alexander Labas:

«I am absolutely sure in one thing: with every decade, my works will become more and more intelligible, and in 50 or 100 years they will fully resound. Then everyone will notice our time that people rarely felt as I do, and rarely comprehended the most complex phenomena of our fascinating 20th century. I was born at the best moment possible, and for me this century is better than any other.»