Young Man with a Goatee 1907

Natalia Goncharova made this oil painting, Young Man with a Goatee, the dimensions are 100 by 65 cm. The paint is really worked, and the color palette is sort of strange, like some kind of early Fauvism. But it’s also very Russian! Look at the surface, the way the paint is built up, especially around the face and shirt. It’s not just about depicting a young man; it’s about the physicality of the paint itself. Goncharova seems to be digging into the material, almost sculpting the features with those loaded brushstrokes. There's a blueish color in the sleeve that is particularly interesting, because it looks like it may have been an earlier layer now being allowed to shine through. Goncharova’s work, with its mix of folk art and avant-garde techniques, reminds me a bit of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another artist who was pushing boundaries. Both artists had a way of embracing imperfection and ambiguity, reminding us that art is always a conversation, a messy, beautiful dialogue across time.