Celebrated for his vibrant views of theater and circus performers, Arthur Fonvizin`s brilliantly-colored works oscillate between the figurative and the abstract. Fonvizin studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, from which he was prophetically expelled together with Mikhail Larionov and Sergei Soudeikine for staging an unauthorized exhibition.

In the years leading up to WWI, Fonvizin actively showed his works with the leading avant-garde associations, including the Blue Rose, Stephanos, Union of Youth, and the Jack of Diamonds, among others. Later, in 1937, his art was publicly condemned by the Soviet government for its formalist qualities alongside that of Robert Falk and Vladimir Favorsky,...