Samuil Adlivankin created the painting My Parents Portrait (Artist’s Family) in 1922. The painting presents the author himself, his wife and their little daughter. They look as if posed in front of the photographer’s camera. This painting is stylistically close to the folk primitive art. Human figures are not drawn with details: the artist rather presents their silhouettes.

There are no effects of light and shade in the painting. All the surfaces and subjects are evenly illuminated without any highlights. Even the background does not lose its brightness and saturation. That is why the image looks flat and the painting resembles a postcard.

The artist depicted himself in a brown jacket and dark blouse with a bow tie. He is wearing a black beret referring to an artistic profession. The artist’s wife has a short haircut according to the fashion of 1920-s. The young woman is wearing a black bell-like skirt and a white blouse with a turn-back collar decorated by a brunch of lilac. Their little daughter is standing on the artist’s right in a smart pink dress.

The bottom part of the canvas resembles pozyom as in ancient Russian icons. Pozyom is a code sign of the earth; usually it was a stipe of green or brown color. The upper part of the painting is the sky. Contours of a forest are visible behind the figures: the color of the trunk of a lonely birch is aligned with the blouse of the artist’s wife.

The painting has the title My Parents Portrait for a reason. The technique used by Adlivankin resembles a child’s drawing, as if the artist’s daughter created it. In 1910-s, the impressionism was no longer relevant, and artists were looking for something new. This is how primitivism evolved based on petroglyphic drawings, ancient iconography, lubok (cheap popular prints) and children’s creative work. Further, suprematism grew from primitivism with Kazimir Malevich as its founding father.

Samuil Adlivankin was born in Smolensk Region in 1897. At 15, he became a student of Odessa School of Arts. In 1917, Adlivankin moved to Samara, where he became a leader of the artistic section of the Regional Committee for Mass Culture. He developed curricula for children and was in charge of artistic education in the city. In 1921, a typhoid epidemic started in Samara, and the artist moved to Moscow. There he worked in Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house and illustrated soviet magazines. In 1961, Samuil Adlivankin organized his solo exhibition. Today major Russian museums and private collections hold his paintings.