Description:
Visual Description: This vertical oil painting is a portrait of an old man seated outdoors under fruit trees. He faces forward with his body angled slightly to his left. His white hair is combed back and his face has deep wrinkles. He wears a gray-green jacket over a pale pink or cream-colored shirt, with dark brown trousers. His legs are spread at the width of his shoulders, his right arm rests on his lap, while he holds a cigarette with his left hand between his legs. Behind the man, two gnarled apple trees frame the composition background, their dark brown trunks twisting upward from the edges of the canvas. The branches extend across the upper portion, filled with yellow-green leaves and round pink and red fruits. The elderly man sits on a wooden bench, and on his right lies a small, orange-red rectangular cigarette paper case, with the brand spelled in Cyrillic. The ground beneath and around the bench is filled with tall grass, interspersed with small wildflowers in pink, white, and yellow tones. (Text and voice: Alexandra Kukulina '26)
Label Text:
With its perceived imperfections—such as limited understanding of human anatomy, lack of spatial depth, and absence of dynamism or visual interest, this painting challenges the common notion that all Socialist Realist works met the highest professional standards of the era. At the same time, it vividly illustrates a shift toward artistic metaphor and the quiet inner life of the individual in late Soviet art. What may appear as flaws paradoxically serves the artist’s aim: to create a psychological portrait of a veteran whose physical decline is suggested through his posture, the faded palette, inert textures, stillness of the scene, and the gnarled silhouettes of the aging apple trees in the background.
MT, 2025
Tags:
painting; portraits; revolutions; fruit; gardens; trees; sitting Subjects:
Painting; Portraits; Gardens; Sitting position; Trees; Canvas; Fruit Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2020.16 |
