This painting was created by the artist Alexandra Kulikova who was born in the old village of Kuratovo, the Komi Republic, in 1945. Until 1940, the village was known as Kebra. It was there that Ivan Kuratov, a Komi poet and the founder of Komi literature, was born in 1839. Alexandra Kulikova’s rural background and strong ties with her home area have determined the artist’s main creative principle — “invoking the spiritual values of her people and their way of life”. In her art, Kulikova reinterprets her own memories of country life, each time solving a new creative challenge.
Alexandra Kulikova creates a coherent image of the Komi village as a macrocosm where nothing is insignificant, and everything is connected. For Kulikova, the village is associated with female energy. Most of her paintings feature the image of the female head of the household. It can be a woman immersed in her day-to-day tasks, almost dissolved in the landscape, a woman’s invisible presence in a still life, or a lonely figure spending her days in a deserted village and waiting for her husband or son to return from war.
“Inside a Peasant Cottage” is also built around a female character. In this painting, the artist ventured into the unfamiliar territory of expressionism during a period of creative experiments with pure unmixed colors. At the turn of the millennium, Alexandra Kulikova became fascinated with traditional Komi culture and mythology.
The artist depicted a typical everyday scene: the peasant cottage with its beautiful colorful floor mats and curtains is flooded with light, and a woman wearing a Komi costume sits on the bench by the window. She is engaged in the traditional women’s craft of spinning. Sitting by her side is a white cat closely watching the spinning wheel rotate.
The painting can also be interpreted as a metaphor: the powerful simplified image of a woman holding a ball of red thread in her hands may refer to the archetype of the Great Heavenly Spinner, Goddess of Fate, spinning the thread of human life. The swiftly rotating spinning wheel symbolizes the turning of time, and the everlasting cycle of birth, life, and death.
The vibrant color palette is dominated by four pure primary colors: white, red, blue, and yellow. The painting style is as expressive as it gets, with the broad brushstrokes magically transforming the space and crafting an almost tangible sense of dynamics.
