Crimea. Alupka. 1916

Curator: Pyotr Konchalovsky's "Crimea. Alupka." painted in 1916. An expressionist painting rendered with oil paint, depicting a coastal town. Editor: Right away, the colors just leap out—a riot of blues and greens, but also those unexpectedly warm buildings perched on the cliffs. It feels… slightly unreal. Curator: Observe how Konchalovsky constructs the scene through distinct, almost geometric blocks of color. Note the application of impasto techniques—thick layers of paint. These build a structuralist architecture of cliffs, houses, and vegetation. The sea, flattened into horizontal brushstrokes of varying blue hues, reinforces the overall emphasis on form. Editor: Exactly, the houses especially, feel almost… stacked, not quite organically part of the landscape, which is interesting when we think of landscape painting, you know, trying to integrate architecture. It gives it a slightly unsettling quality. Curator: Unsettling? I perceive a conscious reduction of naturalism to underscore the artist’s subjective experience. There’s a clear visual logic—how the receding road and strategically positioned trees orchestrate a sense of depth within the composition. Look too, how the chromatic scale enhances a rhythmic quality and directs your gaze. Editor: I see the technique, I appreciate it, truly. And maybe it’s just me but the somewhat discordant color choices mixed with that… angularity make it teeter on the edge between beautiful and maybe something just a touch unnerving. Still, that emotional ambiguity is the thing, isn’t it? Curator: Indeed. Konchalovsky delivers here a study not merely in representationalism, but on how visual form renders subjectivity in art, and his personal encounter of the locale itself. Editor: Yeah, to bottle a place like that, the coast there… feels so intense, like its just bursting from within and out, just for it to land as some paint here is wild and makes my soul light!