Back in his school years in the Saratov Guberniya, Kuzma tried his hand at painting icons at the workshop of some icon painters he knew, drew shop signs to make some money. By a lucky chance, he found himself at the Baron Stiglitz School of Technical Drawing in St. Petersburg. Later, he became a student of Valentin Serov, a master of academic portrait, at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

The ‘Midday. Summer’ is a Russian peasant’s whole life put on canvas. The artist reflected the main stages of a person’s life. Women with children are for birth and motherhood, a lad and a girl — for love, a funeral procession — for death. The other characters are working — gathering the crops, chopping wood, milking the cattle, and taking a rest after hard work.

The ‘Midday’ represents Petrov-Vodkin’s special creative technique part of which was the principle of three colours. The artist believed that blue, yellow, and red were the main colours, and the rest of colours were derivatives. Combinations of the tones of those three main colours made it possible for him to create strong and pure harmonies.

Another specific feature of the painter’s brush is spherical perspective. Unlike conventional linear perspective, this type of perspective simultaneously presents the landscape from above, a bird’s eye view, and from a side view, a man’s eye view. Due to this technique, the viewer is looking at the planet as if from outer space. Absence of the horizon line and rounded lines enhance this effect.