A notable feature of Yefim Chestnyakov’s paintings is that true-to-life and fairy tale elements in them combine seamlessly. The artist has created his own unique world whose inhabitants live in a single unified and yet mysterious, in the eyes of our contemporaries, world. The painting “Seamstress” immediately captures the viewers’ attention with its unusual composition. To arrange its visual elements, the artist has used a fabulous technique, which allows one to freely depict objects of various sizes in one dimension and to merge events from different points in time.

In this work, Yefim Chestnyakov has moved away from traditional compositions used in genre paintings and from classic rules of linear perspective. There is a multidimensional quality to the composition typical of Russian icons and folk art. In this painting, just as in an icon, spatial arrangements intersect and interact without getting in the way of one another, and time is arbitrary. The subjects are depicted in various sizes, and events happening in different locations are merged together in one composition. A farm girl with sewing in her hands is the focus of the artwork. A large city is visible behind her, and festively dressed people are walking around its square, with each group busy with their own activities.

A scene, which corresponds to a fragment of Yefim Chestnyakov’s largest painting “Entry into the City of Universal Welfare”, is in the background. By distorting proportions, the artist has turned the girl, the largest figure on the canvas, into the focal point of the artwork. She is wearing a traditional outfit of a peasant woman for a festive occasion. The painting does not convey a sense of movement, instead it portrays a magical vision symbolizing cleanliness and hard work. The girl appears to both rise above the city and its inhabitants with their worldly pleasures, and remain on the ground at the same time. Next to her, there is a sewing tool and a white cloth on her lap, symbolizing work and a way of life of a Russian peasant woman. The seamstress is depicted in a mysterious and symbolic manner, and despite the use of darker colors, she looks luminous and light. Just as in his other paintings, Yefim Chestnyakov aimed to portray the inner world of the subjects and their emotional state, rather than concrete actions.

Everything has its place in Yefim Chestnyakov’s compositions: the past, seemingly from centuries past, the present and the prospects of a bright future. It is a feature characteristic of his works, created on the principles old Russian and folk art that treats time as something infinite.