Portrait of I.A. Malyutin is distinguished by an increased dynamism that is created with the help of pictorial shifts, broken lines, rhythmic spots that are inflorescences, and expressive strokes. A similar style characterized the landscape and portrait compositions painted by Lentulov in 1918. The author and the model enjoyed friendly relations.
A young man in a gray suit, his hands clasped in front of him on the back of a chair, peers sullenly from under his eyebrows. The figure is done in cold gray-green-blue tones, and the provisional background is in contrasting warm ocher orange and red. The image seems to be constructed by the artist from arbitrarily shifted pictorial planes, brittle, angular lines, and multidirectional strokes, which makes the picture dynamic and expressive. The figure and background seem to fly apart in light color ‘shreds’. The face and hands are modeled with a variety of overtones that echo the colors of the clothing and background.
How external resemblance and the plasticity that is characteristic for this person are conveyed is convincing. The color scheme and cubist, brittle interpretation give the image an inner gustiness, irascibility, and gloomy assertiveness. But deep psychology is not what distinguishes this portrait, and this, apparently, was not the artist’s objective when doing this work. Prominent dramatization of images, and the desire for increased dynamism, remained in Lentulov’s landscape and portrait compositions in 1918. These works ‘are marked by a particular effortlessness and impetuosity of painting, fitting the joy of newfound contact with “living” nature’. All the figurative shifts and forms are subordinate here to a single rhythm of feathery inflorescences in the form of spots, whose dynamism is emphasized by the shading freely applied over them.
This kind of canvas includes the Portrait of Ivan Andreyevich Malyutin (1918). This is an artist who became a full-fledged member of the ‘Jack of Diamonds’ movement in 1917. He was a member of the ‘Wednesday’ club and the Moscow Artists’ Association, and showcased his works at exhibitions held by other art associations in the 1920s. The figure of Malyutin is presented in the space on the canvas on a fairly large scale. The interior of the workshop is marked very provisionally. In the background, there is a clear predominance of warm tones: red, brown, and yellow. The interpretation (with external manifestations of cubism) is flat, the head is somewhat more fleshed out, and the face is modeled with an emphasized light-and-dark molding. Intersecting diagonal strokes that run across the entire figure add an additional sharpness of presentation, and the effect of surprise, to the entire figure. But that is as far as it goes: behind the convincing process of conveying the external resemblance and habits of the person depicted, it cannot be felt that there is a deep grasp of his human essence or fate.
A young man in a gray suit, his hands clasped in front of him on the back of a chair, peers sullenly from under his eyebrows. The figure is done in cold gray-green-blue tones, and the provisional background is in contrasting warm ocher orange and red. The image seems to be constructed by the artist from arbitrarily shifted pictorial planes, brittle, angular lines, and multidirectional strokes, which makes the picture dynamic and expressive. The figure and background seem to fly apart in light color ‘shreds’. The face and hands are modeled with a variety of overtones that echo the colors of the clothing and background.
How external resemblance and the plasticity that is characteristic for this person are conveyed is convincing. The color scheme and cubist, brittle interpretation give the image an inner gustiness, irascibility, and gloomy assertiveness. But deep psychology is not what distinguishes this portrait, and this, apparently, was not the artist’s objective when doing this work. Prominent dramatization of images, and the desire for increased dynamism, remained in Lentulov’s landscape and portrait compositions in 1918. These works ‘are marked by a particular effortlessness and impetuosity of painting, fitting the joy of newfound contact with “living” nature’. All the figurative shifts and forms are subordinate here to a single rhythm of feathery inflorescences in the form of spots, whose dynamism is emphasized by the shading freely applied over them.
This kind of canvas includes the Portrait of Ivan Andreyevich Malyutin (1918). This is an artist who became a full-fledged member of the ‘Jack of Diamonds’ movement in 1917. He was a member of the ‘Wednesday’ club and the Moscow Artists’ Association, and showcased his works at exhibitions held by other art associations in the 1920s. The figure of Malyutin is presented in the space on the canvas on a fairly large scale. The interior of the workshop is marked very provisionally. In the background, there is a clear predominance of warm tones: red, brown, and yellow. The interpretation (with external manifestations of cubism) is flat, the head is somewhat more fleshed out, and the face is modeled with an emphasized light-and-dark molding. Intersecting diagonal strokes that run across the entire figure add an additional sharpness of presentation, and the effect of surprise, to the entire figure. But that is as far as it goes: behind the convincing process of conveying the external resemblance and habits of the person depicted, it cannot be felt that there is a deep grasp of his human essence or fate.
