COLLECTION

Zverev's enormous number of self-portraits represents a long and very personal conversation between the artist
and those that interested him. Here we see Zverev in a felt hat with the profile of Van Gogh with high cheekbones.
Here he resembles Van Gogh once again: a surprised red-haired dreamer in a fur cap with ear flaps tied below his
chin. Here we see a dark and profound Vrubel-like self-portrait, a paraphrase of The Demon. In each portrait, we
see Zverev engaged in a conversation with other great artists on an equal footing.

Zverev's landscapes are tender and limpid like spring flowers. They show glimmering golden church domes that seem to float in the air, the openwork of trees, birches with opening leaves, and pine trees with dark trunks in the summer heat. Light is the main protagonist of his landscapes: it is the medium in which everything (forests, fields and onion domes) floats and swims. Even in the twilight of Zverev's townscapes, warm sunlight emanates from the windows of houses.

Zverev reinvented suprematism. He made it painterly and filled the clear geometric forms with dusky passion.
Malevich painted balanced bright and dynamic compositions in a very fine and precise manner.
Zverev suffused strict geometry with a dark and enticing play of colors, as if he had dropped the clarity of
form into the water ripples in a deep dark well.

Zverev's illustrations to Gogol, Andersen and Apuleius are more than just depictions of literary images and themes.
Zverev's vision of every great writer is an attempt to include him in his own artistic world, to assimilate him and
to look at him through the lens of his own worldview: the dark and gloomy fantastic world of Gogol's Viy, the
lightness and tenderness of Andersen's fairy tales, and Apuleius' elegant hedonism. Zverev does not simply illustrate
literary works but also makes very complex double portraits. The grandiose figures of great writers and of the great
artist emerge in this kaleidoscope of drawings.

Zverev's gaze is penetrating and precise. In the endless succession of female heads, he attentively
seizes the unique features of each model – the perspective, the half-sunk eyes, the misty gaze, and the
tenderness of the play of pastel tones. Each portrait is a deep and lyrical spiritual revelation.
Taken together, they create a single eternal image of the "fair lady".

Zverev's male portraits are open and expressive. The eyes and faces seem to swing open towards the viewer and show the energy of passion and movement. Zverev paints male faces using gouache, watercolor and pencil, choosing the best technique for each person. Zverev's friends and acquaintances break out of the paper, as if bursting through it, and surround him in their polyphony.

Zverev's portraits of children always contain a remarkably perceptive gaze into the future. Zverev approached children,
the sons and daughters of his friends, with a rare tenderness and attentiveness. In his children's portraits, Zverev did not
depict a sweet natural charm and spontaneity. He showed children as serious and concentrated people, managing to pierce
the present to get a glimpse of the future.

In his Treatise on Painting (1963), Zverev wrote, "Abstractionism literally burst into a peace-loving and conservative world, condemning itself to the attacks and the total disbelief and mockery of society… Nevertheless, abstractionism made a great impact and spread like a typhoon in places that were still frequented until recently by traditional painters, timidly copying city-dwellers and tsars that were preparing for death. Malevich's black square! Bluish-black with red and yellow tones! With dashes and stripes piercing! the sky! and the clouds! Kandinsky's arrows! killing while storming the great sign…" Each of Zverev's works became a true manifesto of abstractionism as pure art.