Vera Pestel
1886-1952
‘One of my earliest memories of collecting in Russia was meeting Sofiya Pestel, daughter of Vera Pestel, in the flat of Valery Dudakov. Small, unassuming and very charming, she used the money from the sale of an artwork for a trip to Spain, which she had, despite her advancing years, longed to visit.’ James Butterwick, 2020
A direct descendant of the Decembrist Colonel, Pavel Pestel, Vera graduated from high school with a gold medal, training in Munich between 1909 and 1911 under the Hungarian painter Simon Hollosy, and later, between 1912-1913, under Le Fauconnier and Metzinger at La Palette in Paris. The Paris art studios, museums, exhibitions and galleries provided the opportunity to study European art, but in 1915, influenced by Tatlin, Pestel became interested in Futurism.
Around 1915-1916, her paintings bore similarities to Malevich’s alogism, with a profusion of geometrical planes and heterogeneous elements (numbers, letters, fragments of objects). They became increasingly abstract and particularly remarkable for their keen sense of colour and subtle constructions. Pestel took part in the ‘Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10’ in 1915 in Petrograd – where Malevich’s ‘Suprematism’ was first mentioned – and in the exhibition ‘Magasin’, organised by Tatlin in Moscow.
Later she gave up Futurism and turned to realistic forms, becoming a member of the groups ‘Makovets’ and ‘The Path of Painting’. She married at the age of 18, but in 1920 her husband died of typhoid. In 1940 her son was arrested and sent to the Gulag without the right to correspondence. He died there in 1943.
