Exhibition of one painting by Alexander Kuprin "Crimean landscape"

On March 17, in the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts (104 Lenina st.), Within the framework of the Art Chronograph project, an exhibition of one painting by Alexander Kuprin “Crimean Landscape” from the funds of the KMII will begin work. The exhibition is dedicated to the reunification of Crimea with Russia in 2014.

Alexander Vasilyevich Kuprin (1880-1960) - one of the greatest masters of Russian fine art of the first half of the twentieth century, an outstanding master of industrial landscape, one of the active members of the famous "Jack of Diamonds" association, a member of the "Moscow Painters" association.

The work “Crimean Landscape was written in 1945 by order of the Moscow Painting and Exhibition Plant and transferred to the Kaluga Museum in 1949. The second title of the work is "Noon", as evidenced by the inscription on the reverse side of the canvas.

The Crimean period in Kuprin’s work is a rather large and important stage in the artist’s life. For the first time A. Kuprin visited Crimea in 1907 at the insistence of the doctor who treated him, and subsequently, for many years, the master for health reasons will be forced to settle in the Crimea. This is how the first encounter with the sea and the mountain landscape, which was decisive for his further work, took place. The dominance of the Crimean theme for many years was firmly established in the work of A. Kuprin.

The painting "Crimean Landscape" presents a picturesque world, the colors of which are more intense than in reality, the forms are plastic, and the light-air environment is tangible. Hot afternoon. The road leading to the gorge, in the distance, the blue-blue shine of the lake water at the foot of the mountains, the squat buildings of the village and poplars, pyramidal poplars - as something inherent in southern nature. Slender and majestic giants, on the canvas, are a dominant, fixing the gaze, forming a spatial boundary. This technique provides a compositional effect and forms the main motive of the picture.

Rhythmically depicted silhouettes of poplars give rise to a new theme, make you visually ascend to the tops of the mountains, observe the panorama of the midday sky and return again to the depths of the picture, where the road almost disappears, and where the spatial-volumetric development of the entire composition ends.

The work reveals the richest interconnection of shades of color, rhythm, spatial forms. The blue tint, in which the mountains in the distance are painted, is adjacent to the ocher-sandy-yellow tones of the relief of the foreground mountains and the rocky soil of the road. The lush greenery of the roadside bush maintains a heavy green tonality, poplar groups and harmoniously borders on the gray-mossy shades of steppe grasses, and the clear waters of the foothill lake are reflected in the high blue sky with white clouds.

"Crimean Landscape" is a realistic work that became the artist’s contribution to the development of the art of socialist realism. Kuprin managed to convey the most valuable thing - a humane attitude to the natural world and the surrounding reality.

The exhibition will run until March 31, 2021.