Lot 53: *KUZNETSOV, PAVEL - (1878-1968) Bouquet in a Blue Vase

*KUZNETSOV, PAVEL
(1878-1968)
Bouquet in a Blue Vase.
Oil on canvas, 74 by 66 cm.
Executed in the early 1930s.

Provenance: Collection of the artist's family, Moscow (inscribed in Cyrillic and numbered "200" on the reverse).
Private collection, Europe.

Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert V. Petrov.

Literature: Pavel Kuznetsov, Moscow, Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1975, p. 370, No. 666, listed.

At the beginning of the 1930s, having left behind the dreamy symbolism of the Blue Rose group and avant-garde quests of his Asian and Steppe series, Pavel Kuznetsov offered himself to the endless opportunities of the Still Life genre. In friendly rivalry with Martiros Saryan, he created suites of works devoted to his beloved garden with its roses, peonies, phloxes and wild flowers. It was precisely this type of still lifes that embodied Kuznetsov's artistic credo in these years.

Bouquet in a Blue Vase is imbued with an especially vibrant radiance. The entire sheaf of lush flowers and herbage seem to spring from the canvas in a subtle interplay of colour and light, built up - typically for Kuznetsov - by combining various dark blue and yellow tones. The flowers are bunches of sunlight, diffused into the space of the composition. The window in the background merges with the foreground flowers and fruit into one exultant anthem to the light, beauty and richness of the natural world.

Of great significance in Kuznetsov's 1930s flower paintings are their poetic mood, utopian brightness and lyrical appeal. The world of nature mortethat he depicted turns out to be much livelier than his scenes of real life on kolkhoz and sovkhoz farms. For him, matter in the universe is a single body, where objects are not differentiated or rigidly demarcated from each other; on the contrary, they are woven together to form one living substance.

Exquisite in its composition, with melodious colour and rhythm of line, Bouquet in a Blue Vase bears the hallmarks of the vision, judgement and culture of its creator - one of the leading Russian painters of the 20th century.