Mask. For the Ballet Studio of B.Nizhinskaya 1919

Vadym Meller made this tempera on paper work, titled 'Mask', for the Ballet Studio of B. Nizhinskaya. I can only imagine the artist layering down blocks of pigment, building the figure piece by piece, plane by plane. It's so striking, so graphic in the use of simple colour and form. I wonder if Meller had a specific dancer or performance in mind as he painted? The figure seems to melt into these bright yellow and red shards of colour and light, almost as though the movement of dance has been captured in paint! Look at the dancer’s hand on the left, how the fingers are painted like little triangles, and how the colours overlap and create a shadow. It really reminds me of Picasso’s cubist portraits from the early 20th century. You get the feeling that artists like Meller and Picasso were bouncing ideas off each other, even from different places. Paintings like this remind us that artists are always in conversation, building on each other’s discoveries, and adding their own unique voice.