Still Life. Table, books, and the pipes. 1929

Pyotr Konchalovsky made this painting of a table, books, and pipes in 1925, we don’t know where. The colour! It’s like he’s squeezing pigment right onto the canvas, smearing it around with a brush like he’s spreading butter on bread. The red of the tabletop vibrates against the ochre background. Look closely at that table leg: it’s a swirl of grey, black, and white, somehow suggesting weight and movement at the same time. There's a real physicality to the paint – thick in places, thin in others, like he couldn't decide whether to caress the canvas or attack it. I love how the objects on the table – books, pipes, a little jar – seem almost secondary to the act of painting itself. It’s not about what’s there, but how it's made. I see echoes of early Cézanne in Konchalovsky’s work, that same interest in flattening space and building form with colour. But there’s also a Russian intensity here, a rawness that feels unique. It's a reminder that painting is always a conversation, a dance between artists across time and space.