Meeting. Stage design for the Ostrovsky's play 'The easy money' 1917

Boris Kustodiev's stage design for Ostrovsky's play 'The Easy Money' is an oil on canvas, and it's like a little carnival of color and form. You can see Kustodiev's process in the brushwork. It's loose, lively, almost playful. The color palette is bright, but not garish, more like an idealized memory than a photograph. I love how he builds up the textures, especially in the buildings. Notice the white building on the left. It’s not just white, it's got layers of pinks and blues. This layering gives it a kind of shimmering quality, like it's alive. The little red shop in the centre, with its Cyrillic lettering, is the anchor of the composition. It creates a focal point that leads the eye back into the distance, and those tiny figures, almost like dolls, give the whole scene a sense of theatre. This reminds me of the work of the artist Red Grooms, but with a Russian soul. It’s an image that embraces the messiness and the beauty of life. It makes you want to jump right into the scene.