Verka 1913

Filipp Malyavin painted Verka with oil on canvas, and it feels like a world of color exploded onto the surface. Look at the way the blues and oranges wrestle each other in the girl’s dress, those marks aren’t blended, but sit next to each other, vibrating with energy. It’s so physical, you can almost feel Malyavin attacking the canvas, trying to capture something fleeting. The paint is thick and juicy, especially in the background, where the brushstrokes are like slashes of light and shadow. See how the red headscarf frames her face, drawing your eye to her solemn expression? There's a raw honesty in Malyavin’s work, a willingness to embrace the messiness of paint. It makes me think of Chaïm Soutine, who also used color and texture to convey intense emotion. It’s all about process, about the act of painting itself, as a way of understanding the world. Art doesn’t need to be neat or perfect, it just needs to be real.