London’s art world is having a Russian moment. This time it’s not led by the high-profile purchases of UK-based oligarchs such as Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, but by a band of Russian women making inroads into the capital’s art scene this spring. The striking St Petersburg-born collector Nonna Materkova is evangelical, for instance, about the launch of her Calvert 22 venture in London’s East End in May; it will be the UK’s first non-profit foundation dedicated to contemporary art from Russia and eastern Europe.

“We open with a group show of works by five leading Russian contemporary artists including Haim Sokol and Leonid Tishkov (May 13-June 14),” says Materkova, who has run her own London-based corporate finance consultancy for the past 10 years. With plans for a Russian art library in the basement of the swanky new 5,500 sq ft Shoreditch gallery and an ambitious ongoing exhibition programme , Calvert 22 aims to introduce established and emerging artists from the former Soviet Union to UK audiences, says the gallery’s artistic director Jane Neal.

Materkova initially ran the venue as a commercial gallery when it opened last year, so why become a non-profit organisation? She stresses that “as Calvert 22 developed and its ethos became clearer, it made more sense as a not-for-profit space, somewhere for people to experience the best of contemporary art from Russia and central and eastern Europe, with the curatorial freedom to show what we like and not be governed by market forces.”

London not only has a burgeoning local collector base but is a magnet for collectors flying in from Moscow and Kiev. “Two-thirds of Russian modern and contemporary art sold worldwide is sold in London,” says William MacDougall, director of MacDougall’s auctions, which specialises in selling Russian art. “Over 90 per cent of the buyers at our Russian art auctions are from the former Soviet Union.”

Female Russian art entrepreneurs in the UK have spotted the potential of this Anglo-Russian art exchange. The London-based contemporary art fund, ARTiculate, founded in 2007 by a troika of women – marketing consultant Lyuba Galkina, curator Nana Zhvitiashvili and ex-dealer Lada Komarova – recently secured sponsorship from the German arm of the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom for a show of works by the conceptual artists Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina held in London and Berlin.

Meanwhile, London dealer Anya Stonelake, who has introduced work by leading Russian artists such as Oleg Kulik and Antanas Sutkus to the UK capital at her West End gallery, White Space, was called on to give advice to a wide range of Moscow-based collectors at Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park last autumn.

This flood of Russian buyers has prompted the Paris-based Volgograd-born dealer Ilona Orel to open a new gallery next month around the corner from Phillips de Pury (a controlling stake in this auction house was sold last year to the Moscow-based Mercury group, a luxury brands conglomerate). “We’ll show mainly Russian artists in London alongside international practitioners such as Ivan Messac of France and Stephen Shanabrook of the US,” said Orel, whose inaugural exhibition “Grid and Greed” (April 22-June 12) features Andrei Moldokin, the ex-Soviet soldier and Boui-born artist who will represent Russia at the Venice Biennale in June. This launch show will be curated by Margarita Tupitsyn, who has co-organised Tate Modern’s timely “Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism”.

“Prices are very competitive for Russian contemporary art,” adds Orel. “You can get your hands on a beautiful piece for a reasonable fee, say, a painting by Yuri Shabelnikov for around €16,000 to €24,000.”

But is there really a market to tap into in these fraught economic times? This sector lost momentum last November with results of Russian art sales at four London auction houses reflecting the downward trend in global art markets. Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bon­hams and MacDougall’s sold a total of £41m of Russian art – but the estimate had been £75m-£95m. Collectors and dealers blamed the dip on exorbitant estimates. “The problem is that the market for Russian art had inflated to an unrealistic level,” says Peter London, who is launching the first Russian Art Fair in the UK this summer at Knightsbridge’s Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel (June 6-8).

He remains bullish about the prospects for the Russian Art Fair, where some 60 dealers will be selling works dating from the 15th century to today. “75 per cent may have been wiped off the Moscow stock exchange but that hasn’t impoverished all Russian private collectors. There will be a few pieces by Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962), for example, priced at the $10m mark at the Knightsbridge fair. These works will only be available to Russian philanthropists or museums as a condition of sale.”

His event will coincide with the next significant round of Russian art auctions in London. “There will be a different mood at the summer sales: reserves will be lowered to a realistic level. The $5,000-$50,000 price range is still buoyant,” he adds.

MacDougall is also cautiously optimistic. “The Russian art auctions in New York next month will probably be poor but the market should then stabilise in London in June,” he says, emphasising that the market has remained strong for figurative late 19th-century artists.

So where does this leave the likes of Orel Art and ARTiculate? Jo Vickery, head of Russian art at Sotheby’s, adds that “it is now de rigueur to talk of Russians as great collectors of contemporary art, but this is a very new phenomenon.” The market is certainly thinner for Russian contemporary art, warns MacDougall: “From November 2006 to mid- 2008, the demand for newish Russian art grew quickly, though not reaching Chinese contemporary art levels, and there are fewer buyers in this sector. These include the offspring of oligarchs and more sophisticated younger buyers.”

So all eyes, it seems, are now on the children of the Russian revolution.

www.calvert22.com
www.macdougallauction.com
www.articulatefund.com
www.whitespacegallery.co.uk
www.orelart.com