Biribi 1907

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin made this landscape painting called Biribi with oil paint, date unknown. Look at those mountains, how they're built up with these chunky strokes, almost like he's sculpting the land with paint. The colors are so earthy, sandy yellows and browns. See how the blues in the sky are mixed softly? It all feels so immediate, like a sketch, but there’s a real sense of place and atmosphere. I love how he’s handled the foreground. The paint is thin and scrubbed in, especially in that long black slash - the railroad line - which acts as a really strong horizontal. It really anchors the whole composition and leads the eye into the mountains. Petrov-Vodkin reminds me of Cézanne a little, in the way that he approaches a landscape as a structure of forms and colors. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation, an ongoing exploration of how we see and experience the world.