Artist – Petrov -Vodkin
Kuzma Sergeyevich Petrov-Vodkin was a wonderful master of painting and its innovator. He was fond of the painting of the early Renaissance and Russian icon painting, which is the result of which the development of a spherical perspective is considered (the artist himself is the use of the term "Spherical perspective" avoided, replacing it with others – "Live visibility"). In autobiographical novels "Khlynovsk" and "Euclide’s space" (late 1920s-early 1930s) He discusses the addition of invented by him "spherical perspective" and gives her philosophical understanding. At the heart – childhood impressions and personal experiences: "…Here on the hill, when I fell to the ground, a completely new impression of the landscape flickered in front of me… I saw the Earth as a planet… A completely new sphericality hugged me on a hill". (Petrov-Vodkin K. With. Khlynovsk. Euclide’s space. Samarkandy. L., 1982).
The principle of spherical perspective was most clearly manifested in the composition of the picture "Spring", written in 1935. The artist most convincingly conveyed his feeling of land as a planet. In his opinion, our perception of space is invariably related to the fact that we are on a spherical planet, and in works of art, this should find a very definite reflection. A sharp displacement of near and distant plans, creating the “effect of the presence” of the viewer inside, in the center of the depicted on the canvas; Building an image along inclined axes, which gives rise to a feeling of rotation of the earth’s surface – all these are elements of the transmission of a certain planetaryity proposed by the artist.
The plot of the picture is truly eternal. Spring is the time of awakening not only nature, but also love, passion, desire to find your second half. Before us are lovers – a guy and a girl – new Adam and Eve, against the background of a spring landscape. In their figures, especially young men, there is a certain awkwardness, stiffness, giving out the timidity of his first love. They still have to happen, everything is full of expectation of a miracle… The young man and the girl seemed to be ascended to the top of the world. It is important for the artist to express a sense of the spiritual greatness of his heroes, to which everything ordinary seems immensely distant. The composition is built so that we see the surrounding landscape through the eyes of heroes sitting at a dizzying height. For, only being next to them on a steep hill, you can see a cliff under your feet, and along its slopes – wooden houses that are crowded to each other. The color scheme is amazingly beautiful. The cold blue tone of the female dress is opposed to the bright yellow T -shirt of the young man, and the contrast of these colors is emphasized by a scarlet beret on the grass. But all these sonorous open colors are extinguished by a lyrical, even a blessed mood of the surrounding nature, written in delicate purple-pink tones.
The picture is based on the early drawing by the pen “Above the cliff” (1920) and other works of the last decade of life, the master, concentrating the good half of the artist’s creative path. In the picture, traces of different artistic directions are seen, including impressionism, cubism and even surrealism, and yet here, as always, is a single and whole Petrov-Vodkin. Spring is the personification of the eternal return of life, a symbol of revival.
