Still Life. Box of cigars. 1916

Pyotr Konchalovsky made this still life with a box of cigars using oil on canvas. Look at how Konchalovsky builds up the image with these confident strokes. It’s like he’s wrestling the scene onto the canvas, capturing the essence of each object with a few bold moves. The colours are earthy, with pops of red and yellow that keep it from being too serious. There’s a real physicality to this painting. You can almost feel the weight of the books, the rough texture of the clay pot. The way he handles the paint, thick in some places, thin in others, it’s all part of the story. See the quick strokes around the books? They give the whole scene a kind of restless energy. It feels like everything is alive, vibrating with its own inner life. Konchalovsky reminds me of Cezanne, he’s interested in the geometry beneath the surface, but with a Russian soul. It's about how we see, not just what we see.