Still Life. Pipe with smoke. 1929

Pyotr Konchalovsky painted this little still life with oil on canvas, and it's a beauty. The way he's handled the paint is so direct, so immediate, you can almost feel him thinking through the brush. I love how the browns and ochres create this warm, earthy atmosphere, but it’s the swirls of paint that make up the smoke that really grab me. They’re so loose, so gestural, like he's trying to capture something fleeting, something almost invisible. The way he’s layered the paint, you can see the history of the marks, each one a decision, a little experiment. It reminds me of Morandi, in a way, that same focus on simple objects, the same quiet intensity. For me, it’s not just a painting of a pipe, it's about the act of seeing, the pleasure of making, the ongoing conversation that is art.