Vegetables Merchant 1920

Boris Kustodiev conjured this watercolour scene of a "Vegetables Merchant" with a kind of folk-art joy. The way he approaches mark-making, it's all about the process. You can see that the colours aren't blended but layered, like he's building up an image one veggie at a time. The red of the watermelon slice, like a party hat on the melon. The brushstrokes are visible, lively, and the paper peeks through in places, giving it a fresh, immediate feel. Check out the woman's shawl, how he uses watercolour to mimic the texture of fabric, but also gives it this kind of flat, graphic punch. It reminds me of some of those early modernist painters who were looking to "naive" art for inspiration. Like, what if Matisse had a babushka? There's something really open-ended about it, and it's a good reminder that art is always a conversation across time.