Bells. Ivan the Great Bell 1915

Aristarkh Lentulov made this painting, Bells. Ivan the Great Bell, with oil, and boy, does it sing! It's all about taking something solid, like architecture, and turning it into a swirling sensation. Look at how he builds up the forms with these angular planes of color. It's like he's not just showing us the building but also the light bouncing off it, the air moving around it, the whole darn experience of being there. The paint isn't trying to hide itself; you can see the strokes, the layers, the way he's wrestling with the image. Notice the top right of the painting, with that dark, ominous triangle. The whole composition is held up by this one triangle. It's not just a painting of a building; it's a painting about seeing, about feeling, about the messy, gorgeous process of trying to capture something real on canvas. It reminds me of the Italian futurist Boccioni. Like Boccioni, Lentulov is not so interested in depicting the real. Instead, he seeks to evoke what it feels like to perceive the real.