Still Life. Peaches. 1935

Pyotr Konchalovsky made this still life of peaches with oil on canvas. I can imagine Konchalovsky in his studio, maybe in the late afternoon, the light soft, setting up this display of fruit. The peaches are arranged in a haphazard manner, some tumbling out of their containers, casually placed in a basket and bowl. The leaves are big and bold. He’s not trying to copy nature, but rather to capture something essential about it. Look at that cloth, thrown on the table. And the paint is thick, applied in visible strokes, not blended to create a smooth surface. The act of painting itself becomes a way of seeing, of thinking, of experiencing these peaches. He is almost wrestling with paint to get the color of the fruit just right. Maybe he was thinking about Cézanne or Matisse. Artists are always in conversation with each other, across time, inspiring and challenging one another. Painting, you know, is an embodied expression, full of ambiguity. We can all bring our own interpretations to it.