Landscape with River 1917

Konstantin Gorbatov painted this moody scene of a river using oils in a layered and textured manner. The scene, rendered in muted blues, greens, and browns, speaks of a landscape caught between seasons, with skeletal trees reaching towards a turbulent sky. I can just imagine Gorbatov standing there, brush in hand, battling the wind as he tries to capture the fleeting light. The paint is applied with visible strokes, giving the work a tactile quality, as if you could reach out and feel the dampness of the air. Those stark, almost mournful trees in the foreground—they remind me of similar motifs in German Expressionist paintings. You can almost see echoes of artists like Emil Nolde in Gorbatov's brushwork and composition. These painters are all in conversation with each other, looking, reacting, and reinterpreting the world around them. Painting opens up a site of inquiry for both the artist and us, asking: How do we see? What do we feel? What does it all mean?