Alexander Tyshler

Tyshler was born on 26 July 1898 (14 July, Old Style) in Melitopol, then in the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine. He studied at the Kiev Art School from 1912 to 1917, then spent roughly two years, 1917 to 1918, in the Kiev studio of the avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter, a formative environment for the city's modernist circle. In 1920 he took part in the Jewish Art Exhibition of Sculpture, Graphic Art, and Drawings organized by the Kultur-lige in Kiev. He moved to Moscow and continued his training at VKhUTEMAS under the graphic artist Vladimir Favorsky, roughly from 1921 to 1923.

Through the 1920s his work appeared in international exhibitions in Dresden (1926), Harbin (1926), Leipzig (1927), Venice (1928), and Riga (1929). During the Second World War he was evacuated to Tashkent, where he held a one-man show in 1943, the same year he was named People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR. Some secondary sources credit him with a Stalin Prize in 1946, though this award is not confirmed by Wikipedia or the YIVO Encyclopedia and should be treated as unverified. Across his career he worked simultaneously in easel painting and in theatrical costume and set design, and he held numerous one-man exhibitions in Moscow and Leningrad, including shows in 1956, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1969, 1974, and 1978. He died on 23 June 1980 in Moscow.

Tyshler is generally described in gallery and museum sources as one of the more original figures of Soviet-era art, distinguished for uniting painting with stage and costume design rather than treating them as separate practices. His posthumous standing has been reinforced by large retrospectives, including a 2017 exhibition titled Alexander Tyshler, Play and Mummery, drawing on roughly 150 works, paintings, drawings, and costume and scenery sketches, organized by the State A. N. Radishchev Art Museum and shown at regional venues. He has also been positioned within broader museum narratives of Ukrainian modernism, as in The Ukrainian Museum's 2006 to 2007 exhibition Crossroads: Ukrainian Modernism 1910 to 1930, and within surveys of Jewish artists of the Russian and Soviet empires. No exact, attributable critical quotation from a named critic in a major outlet could be verified for this profile.

Tyshler's documented auction activity is comparatively sparse. The best-documented price found in public auction records is USD 10,000 for the painting Landscape (1929), reported by Artnet, though the specific auction house, city, and sale date are not specified in the available listing. Sotheby's has offered works with estimates as high as GBP 60,000 to 80,000, but no confirmed realized (hammer) price at that level has been located. Given the small and inconsistently documented sample of sales, collectors should treat any single auction result, high or low, as an isolated data point rather than part of an established price trend.

There is no confirmed published catalogue raisonne for Tyshler, and no dedicated estate authentication body is documented, so attribution depends on exhibition history, museum provenance, and the individual auction house's own vetting. No exclusive current gallery or estate representation could be confirmed; his work circulates through the secondary market, including listings from dealers such as K Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, and through international auction houses. Because the public sales record is thin and inconsistently detailed, and no reliable repeat-sale price history could be assembled from available sources, collectors should treat estimates and reported prices with caution and verify current details directly with the selling house before transacting.