The artist is Kuindzhi
The search for a new picturesque approach to the transfer of the color system of nature at an unusual night time found a convincing artistic expression in the museum of the sketch of the famous picture of 1876 „Ukrainian night “(State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). It would seem that the unremarkable appearance of the Ukrainian village appears here poetically transformed. This sketch on the color and novelty of the landscape image has already contained the features inherent in a large canvas that delighted contemporaries „to Istoma, to some oblivion of all living “.
With rare courage, Kuindzhi summarizes in it the colors of living nature, trying to bring to complete illusion the impression of a night halve and moonlight. The yellowish-green, as if the flickering color of the fuel oil, conveying the changeable optical state of this light, an increase achieved due to the contrast with the deep blue night, was a new word in Russian landscape painting. The entire color scheme of the sketch, which contains shades of green, blue, almost black, is thinly linked with the color of the dark blue starry sky. The emotional perception by the artist of the Ukrainian night with its silence and mysterious moonlight received a concise and decorative expression.
Work on „Ukrainian night “ – a kind of programmatic picture of Kuinji – defined his creative method, which consists not in addressing direct full -scale impressions, but to his artistic memory, which retains the most vivid moments and features of a particular phenomenon, which, refracted through the prism of his author’s imagination and experiences allowed to extract a special exalted world from ordinary nature.
Irina Shuvalova. Kuindzhi in the Russian Museum // Arkhip Kuindzhi. SPb, 2010. With.eleven