Portrait of a Collective Farm Woman 1969

Vudon Baklytsky made this painting of a "Portrait of a Collective Farm Woman" at an unknown date with oil on canvas. Look at how he fearlessly approached the canvas! The mark-making is front and center, it’s all about process here. The colors are muted and earthy, but there's this raw energy in the way Baklytsky applied the paint. You can almost feel him wrestling with the image, scraping and layering, leaving traces of his struggle right there on the surface. I love how the whole face seems outlined in blue, bringing to mind the thick outlines of Rouault. The shapes in the background make me think of shattered glass or fractured ice, and those little dabs of blue inside each fragment add a melancholic note. It’s hard not to read something dark into this image, something about the challenges and resilience of rural life, but maybe that’s just me projecting. Either way, I think Baklytsky and Rouault would have a lot to talk about.