Pyotr Konchalovsky painted the Still Life with Gloxinias in the 1910’s. He was the chairman and one of the founders of the Jack of Diamonds Society, which brought together the masters of the early avant-garde in Russia.

The painting shows a table casually draped with a Prussian blue tablecloth. In the center of the composition there are two clay pots with flowers and fruits: apples, a pear and an orange. The tabletop is slightly tilted towards the viewer. Pyotr Konchalovsky borrowed this technique from the French painter Paul Cezanne. In reality, the table, if placed at such an angle, would collapse due to the displacement of the center of gravity. The artist uses this trick to better show the objects, and to convey their volumes, mass and density of matter.

Pyotr Konchalovsky combined different methods of transferring volume: the fruit on the canvas look three-dimensional, and for the image of gloxinias he used flattened forms. The artist seemed to have laid flat flowers and leaves on the wall and tablecloth. The gloxinias and the background against which they are depicted constitute a single whole. Because of this, the visual perception of space is completely lost.

Pyotr Konchalovsky was born in 1876 in Slavyansk, Donetsk region. He graduated from the Kharkov art school, after which he moved to Moscow. There Konchalovsky graduated from the Stroganov Art College. In 1897, the artist moved to France. In Paris, he studied at a private school of art, the Julian Academy.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Pyotr Konchalovsky worked under the influence of French impressionists. He turned to the innovative techniques of Paul Cezanne and to the color expression of Vincent Van Gogh. Konchalovsky drew inspiration from folk art: primitivism and the art of popular print. The artist became famous for his landscapes and still life pictures in the style of Cubism and Fauvism. After the revolution of 1917, Pyotr Konchalovsky switched to a more realistic style in painting. He became one of the leading masters of Soviet fine art. In 1943, the artist became a laureate of the Stalin Prize, and in 1947, an academician.

The Still Life with Gloxinias entered the museum collection in the 1920’s from the National Museum Fund. Previously, this picture was in the private collection of the statesman Anatoly Lunacharsky.