« He is very refined, but at the same time very simple and fresh - a terrific artist, » writes the art historian Andrei Chegodayev about Vladimir Lebedev in his Letters from Leningrad. Odd though it may seem, but these words can also be considered an almost absolute characteristic of Lebedev’s Portrait of N.A. Lekarenko. « A girl of the thirties “: this phrase gives rise to associations with the era of building the Soviet state, five-year plans, and industrialization. But, looking at the portrait, we just see a young woman. This canvas has many effects that are seemingly unobtainable by oil painting.
The transparent watercolor blue-gray eyes, the soft, as if spreading, contour of a crimson mouth, and delicate blush. The portrait is built on a combination of cold blue with patches of ocher yellow and warm pink. The ultramarine fichu almost merges with the navy blue clothing. The neutral background seems to thicken around the figure. Its color is a mixture of dark blue interspersed with pinkish violet. The calm posture underscores the general mood of thoughtfulness captured by the artist. The abundance of shades of blue emphasizes the beauty of the pearly, pale skin in whose color the warm tone shows through brighter. The painting layer on the portrait is very thin, akin to a watercolor layer. Berated for emulating Impressionism, Lebedev retained a vivid, bright color in all his paintings. The artist is known primarily as a virtuoso graphic artist and as the creator of Soviet children”s books. His sketches of ballerinas and dancers ranked among the best achievements of Soviet graphic art. In painting, he began his journey with experiments in Cubism.
These experiments with space, texture, and color subsequently developed into what Lebedev himself called figurative realism. The portrait from our collection is from those beautiful female images created by Lebedev during that time. If we speak of the peculiarities of the female images present in the work of Vladimir Lebedev, then he was attracted by bright personalities and colorful figures, and these allowed his to display the facets of his talent. A closed, self-absorbed model gives the impression of a complex, ambiguous person. She does not resemble those ruddy, joyful builders of communism, and her image is more reminiscent of an artistic bohemian. A slightly arrogant expression is strangely combined with self-doubt. It is obvious that youth and beauty were not all that interested Lebedev in this woman.
The artist does provide his model with unequivocal characteristics. There are not any « superfluous » details in the portrait. Lebedev considered conditionality as one of the basic laws of painting. At first glance, the artist is busy with tasks that are purely coloristic, ignoring the spatial solution on the canvas. However, at the same time the face seems to be close to the viewer, and the figure is slightly inclined forward. The series of female portraits created by Lebedev from 1927 to the 1940s attests to his undoubted interest in this topic, which is addressed in such diverse ways in each of them. The work in the collection of our museum is another statement of a great master on the topic of femininity in art.
