Mother 1913

Editor: We're looking at "Mother" by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, painted in 1913. The setting feels very peaceful, almost dreamlike, but there's something a bit melancholy in the mother's gaze. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Well, it certainly is a painting that stays with you, isn't it? For me, Petrov-Vodkin manages to capture both the earthly and the ethereal aspects of motherhood. He uses this odd, almost spherical perspective, right? Like we're looking down on this tender moment from above. It’s unsettling and yet also inclusive; we’re both intimately close and strangely distanced. See how the colours vibrate? The earthy reds and greens are juxtaposed with this watery, almost unearthly blue in the background. I find it fascinating how he blends these realistic details – a simple headscarf, the infant's vulnerability – with a symbolic representation of fertility and the earth. Almost like he is showing us a sacred bond at one with the earth itself. It's both intimate and immense in scale. What do you make of it? Editor: I'm really drawn to what you say about the spherical perspective. At first, I just saw it as maybe a technical quirk, but now I think it makes you, the viewer, an intimate part of their world, the natural world. Almost complicit? I do think that at first viewing it seems like a scene with very little connection with us. Curator: Exactly! That disconnect followed by an intimacy – like overhearing the most vulnerable conversation in a language that at first felt remote – it has such narrative drive to it, I think. It is both alienating and also universal. But you are right: that immediate bond is not obvious. Editor: Well, it’s certainly given me a new way to approach Russian art of this period! Curator: Wonderful! These artworks need new conversations to exist, in the same way a mother welcomes their child in.