Pyotr Konchalovskiy created the painting ‘Fall landscape, ” in 1935. He portrayed a small narrow clearing in the forest. In the middle there are two trees with falling yellow leaves, and a small brown house is hidden behind the trees. On the right side of the canvas, the artist revealed a bush with autumn colors and trees that have not turned yellow yet. On the left side, there are two human figures. The background of this painting is filled with high blue skies with light running through the cirrus clouds. At the bottom right, an inscription reads: “P. Konchalovskiy 1935.”
Pyotr Konchalovskiy was born in 1876 in the city of Slavyansk in the Kharkov region. He finished his education in 1905 at the Higher School of Arts, which is a branch of the Academy of Arts. By this time, the world had already known of impressionism and artists like Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, as well as the names of post-impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. These artists created a completely new art: they defied the laws of linear perspective, distorted images, and tried to paint pictures with separate light strokes of paint — or, conversely, illustrated heavy figures with clear outlines.
Pyotr Konchalovskiy was inspired by these changes. He became one of the founders of the artists' association with the title, ‘Jack of Diamonds, ” in the early 1910s. Members of the group were fascinated by the vulgarity in the paintings by rural artists, who painted signs and tavern trays. Artists of the “Jack of diamonds, ” saw real ingenuity in amateur art, which did not consider the laws of perspective and balance in their compositions. They liked the assertiveness and brevity of such art. Also, the artists were influenced by Paul Cézanne, who said that nature should be considered the correlation of geometric shapes.
During the era of the ‘Jack of Diamonds, ” Pyotr Konchalovskiy tried to simplify the image in order to show nature’s density, entirety and strength. However, after the 1920s the ideas behind the ‘Jack of diamonds, ” no longer influenced his works of art. The color in his paintings became duller. In his realistic landscapes, rich complexity appears showing transition between cold and warm colors. At the same time, his paintings remained rich and bright. His paintings play an important role in the 20th century Russian art.
