Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky

(Russian, 1876-1956)

'A street in Ryazan', 1931

Footnotes

Provenance
The collection of the artist, handlist number '899' (according to label on verso)
Acquired by a noble European family in Russia between 1960-1970
Thence by descent

Exhibited
Moscow, 1933, The 8th Exhibition of the Works of P.P. Konchalovsky, no. 45
Academy of Art USSR, Department of Exhibitions (according to label on verso)

Literature
Vystavka kartin, zasluzhennogo deyatelya iskusstv P.P. Konchalovskogo, 1930-1932, Vseros, 1932, eds. N. Maslenikov, V. Nikol'skii, p. 36, no. 45
Konchalovsky. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie, Moscow, Iskusstvo, 1964, p. 170, listed as "zhi 1690, no. 899"


A Street in Ryazan is from the series of of 'Ryazan landscapes' referred to by the artist's wife in (O. Konchalovskaya, 'Nash zhiznennyi put' ['Our Life Path'] (1956), in K. Frolova, Konchalovskii. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie, Moscow, 1964, p. 56. Madame Konchalovskaya recalls the journeys the couple made to and from Ryazan to see their son Misha who had been drafted into military service and was stationed there. '[...] we spent that whole cold winter travelling back and forth ... the carriages were unheated and lit with candles.' (ibid.).

With Cezanne ever a towering influence from his days in the Knave of Diamonds, in the 1920s Konchalovsky returned to a more traditional style of painting, his palette tamer, his representation less exuberantly expressionistic. By the 1930s, a preoccupation with winter landscapes was apparent, the complex manifestations of the Russian winter providing material for the artist's creative language.

A Street in Ryazan displays Konchalovsky's mastery of colour and homage to the fauve palette; the bold orange of the upper side of the building affording no warmth to the composition, rather suggesting the pale light of the winter sun. The juxtaposition of the cool colours with the warm serves to emphasise the bitter cold of the winter, the blue of the snow drifts ambiguous – the sun could be setting or rising, the viewer cannot know. Nevertheless, the painting resonates with the energy of the men who appear to be engaged in building work, their footprints in the snow rendered with two blue strokes. In the foreground, pigeons bob up and down, foraging for food, unbothered by the men or the weather.

A comparable work from the 'Ryazan series' is Pier at Ryazan (private collection), numbered '898' on the verso and hence the one prior to the offered lot (number '899') in the artist's handlist. In Pier at Ryazan, the same creative credo of Konchalovsky can be observed: a preoccupation with the energy which humans bring to a landscape, as evidenced by the men in the foreground carrying logs and the smoke issuing from the little wooden hut on the snow-laden riverbank.

In the Ryazan series, Konchalovsky appears to be observing man in his context. He shows the monumentality of landscape, emphasised by free, confident brushwork in wide, artistic strokes of thick paint, and against this he shows man: small, unremarkable and yet busy with life. The laconic nature of his landscapes is undercut by the vibrant colours and it is in colour that he shows the impact man has made on landscape. In Oleg's House in Ryazan, 1931, a huge pink house dominates the composition, evidence of how humans can alter their landscape.

A Street in Ryazan is emblematic of Konchalovsky's mode of expression in the 1930s. Its highly complex colour permutations undermine the apparent silence and repose of landscape, speaking as it does of the drama and energy of man within nature.