Sugdayya 1922

Konstantin Bogaevsky made this landscape of Sugdayya in an unknown year, using graphite pencil on paper. Bogaevsky was working in a time of immense social upheaval, experiencing the transition from Imperial Russia to the Soviet Union. In this landscape, the artist evokes a world that is both familiar and strikingly otherworldly. Towers and mountains are rendered with great texture, the sky with a dramatic cloud formation and rays of light breaking through, that create a sense of tension. Bogaevsky's work can be seen as a reflection of the anxieties and aspirations of a society undergoing profound transformation. The image resonates with a deep sense of longing for a world that is slipping away, or perhaps, a yearning for a future yet to be realized. The artist invites us to contemplate our own relationship to history, and to consider the ways in which our identities are shaped by the landscapes we inhabit and the stories we tell about them.