Bird cherry in a glass. 1932 Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin (1878-1939)

Description of Kuzma Petrov Vodkin’s painting "Cherry Tree in a Glass".

What appears to the viewer’s eyes? Chaotically scattered objects surrounding a sprig of bird cherry. The white flowers are contrasted with the ordinariness and simplicity of the composition. The artist tries to present familiar things in a new way, resorting to color and texture contrasts of objects. Petrov-Vodkin paid particular attention to his works in the genre of still life and described them as "one of the sharp conversations of a painter with nature. And indeed, despite the lack of apparent connection between the objects of the composition, the painting radiates harmony.

The chaos depicted on the table is viewed from above and clearly bounded by the canvas. Things are connected by a single space. The "as if in the palm of one’s hand" view allows one to note the strict order and "independence" of the objects in the arrangement. The book under the glass of water bright spot breaks through and disrupts the overall color scheme. The stained and untidy saucer and spoon in the right corner seem superfluous. Two letters and an inkwell call for writing a response. A small box lies lonely at the bottom, almost unnoticeable at first glance of the drawing. And over all this "junk" stretches the fragrance and beauty of flowers.

What is particularly unique and vivid in this work is a special variant of perspective given by the artist. The whole still life is seen as if from above, creating an unusual three-dimensionality of the image. All the details of the group are interspersed, hiding behind one another, but at the same time, they are on one plane. This is wrong, because it turns out that everything that is visible to the eye must roll down. But it is in this opposition that the peculiarity of the painting and the work of Petrov-Vodkin lies. This generates the tension of the atmosphere and the elasticity of the space that he so skillfully juggles.

Many did not accept or understand this vision of the master. But the artist remained true to himself, constantly in search of the so-called "moving" visibility. Petrov-Vodkin longed to expand the artistic boundaries of his canvases. Departing from spherical and classical perspectives in his work, he resorted, in fact, to the transformation of the artistic world, extracting the new by distorting and violating the correctness of the academic rules of perspective construction.