Family Portrait (Siena) 1912

Pyotr Konchalovsky made "Family Portrait (Siena)" in 1912 using oil on canvas. The palette here is like a faded memory, all pastel pinks and greens, with a strange flatness that almost feels like fresco. You can really see the marks of the brushstrokes, kind of chunky and deliberate, like he's building up the forms piece by piece. The texture of the paint itself is key. It’s not trying to hide anything, the materiality is right there on the surface. Look at the father's robe, the way the white paint clumps and folds, creating these blocky, almost architectural shapes. It’s like he's sculpting with paint, not just describing. And the way the pink wall feels almost velvety, you can practically feel the nap of the brush. Konchalovsky reminds me a bit of Cézanne, this pushing and pulling of forms, this way of seeing the world not as a fixed thing, but as something always in process, always becoming. It’s about the act of seeing and painting, not just what's being depicted.