Patio 1905

Konstantin Alexeevich Korovin made this painting, Patio, with oil on canvas. You can see how the colours and shapes seem to breathe and blend on the canvas. It feels very intuitive. I imagine Korovin standing there, squinting, trying to capture the essence of that place, that light. What was it like to stand there? You can feel the sunbaked earth, the wooden walls and the green beyond in the way he lets the paint mingle and dance. There's something really gutsy and raw about the way he handles the paint; it's like he's wrestling with the scene, trying to pin it down but also letting it be free. Like the way he suggests those wooden planks with just a few strokes of brown and ochre. You see other artists doing this, like Van Gogh. It’s all part of this conversation that painters have across time, pushing each other, daring each other to see the world in new ways. Painting is such an embodied thing, you know? It embraces the messy, the unresolved.