In 1934, a few months before his death, the artist Alexander Borisov told his nephew: ‘For the last two years I’ve been working on a 7m² picture for the Arkhangelsk Museum. It’s an Arctic scenery. Maybe I’ll finish it this year, or maybe I’ll keep it for a year more. This is a kind of picture you can paint for twenty years, and still it will look incomplete.’ August Night in the Kara Sea was the last picture he ever painted. The 17th of August of 1934, Borisov died of a heart attack.
The picture was preceded by a painting with a poetic and somewhat eerie title Land of Death, which is one of the most famous works by Alexander Borisov. It was painted in 1903 and is now exhibited in the Russian State Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg. Land of Death was created after an expedition to Novaya Zemlya. In this picture, the artist summarized his impressions on the Arctic, which are also reflected in hundreds of studies on the topic. Borisov managed to ‘steal the silent mystery of the North and show the world the uncanny beauty of the arctic world’, as the artist himself defined his goal.
It is likely that the title Land of Death was chosen thanks to Farthest North, a book by a famous Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen that Borisov had read. Borisov reproduced this composition many times, with slight variations on colour scheme and adding symbolic details. The painting has darkened a lot, maybe because of bitumen paint that tends to fade with time. However, the dark, gloomy hues add up to the strong emotional impact of the image.
The picture was preceded by a painting with a poetic and somewhat eerie title Land of Death, which is one of the most famous works by Alexander Borisov. It was painted in 1903 and is now exhibited in the Russian State Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg. Land of Death was created after an expedition to Novaya Zemlya. In this picture, the artist summarized his impressions on the Arctic, which are also reflected in hundreds of studies on the topic. Borisov managed to ‘steal the silent mystery of the North and show the world the uncanny beauty of the arctic world’, as the artist himself defined his goal.
It is likely that the title Land of Death was chosen thanks to Farthest North, a book by a famous Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen that Borisov had read. Borisov reproduced this composition many times, with slight variations on colour scheme and adding symbolic details. The painting has darkened a lot, maybe because of bitumen paint that tends to fade with time. However, the dark, gloomy hues add up to the strong emotional impact of the image.
