Kondratiy 1939

Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky made Kondratiy with oil on canvas. I love the mosaic-like brushstrokes in this painting, it feels like he’s building up the image bit by bit, not just depicting it. There’s a real physicality to the paint, especially in the foreground, where dabs of green, yellow and brown create a sense of depth and texture. Look at the boy’s face, see how the colours are mixed to create a sense of form. The artist isn’t trying to hide the process; you can see every stroke and decision. It’s so different from super smooth, academic painting where everything’s blended. This kind of broken colour feels radical, and it anticipates a lot of what the Impressionists were doing in France at the time. It’s like Bogdanov-Belsky is having his own conversation with artists like Monet and Pissarro, but on Russian soil. The image asks us to embrace ambiguity and let go of any fixed notions of what it means to see and represent the world.