Torso 1975

Vasiliy Ryabchenko made this painting, Torso, using oils to build up a thickly textured surface with soft blues, creams, and white. I can imagine Ryabchenko circling around the canvas, maybe for days, coaxing the image out. You can see it in the paint—the history of the painting process, the pentimenti, as we call them. He’s building the figure in a kind of tonal way, not exactly shading, but more like feeling his way through the light and dark, squinting as he goes. I wonder if he was thinking about the early Cubists, Braque or Picasso, as he mixed his neutral palette. There's a sensitivity in the application of paint, a kind of awkward vulnerability in the composition. It reminds me of Guston’s later work. Like Philip, Ryabchenko embraced ambiguity, allowing for multiple readings, keeping the image in flux. Because, let's face it, artists are always responding to each other's work across time. We are all in conversation.