Still life with violin 1916

This quick drawing of a ‘Still Life with Violin’ was dashed off by Pyotr Konchalovsky at some point in his career. Look at the speed of the marks, like he’s trying to capture the essence of the objects rather than their exact form. I imagine him in a room filled with music and art, his mind buzzing with ideas. What's fascinating here is how the still life elements - the violin, the music book - almost burst with energy. The lines are chaotic but they create a strange kind of harmony, as if the objects are vibrating with their own inner music. You can feel the influence of Cubism. It’s a sketch, but you can see Konchalovsky thinking about how to represent three dimensions on a flat surface, breaking down forms and putting them back together in a new way. He's in conversation with Picasso and Braque, taking their ideas and making them his own. It's a reminder that every artist is building on what came before, remixing the past into something new.