Mountain Abode 1933

This “Mountain Abode” is by Nicholas Roerich, who painted prolifically across many different mediums. Roerich simplifies the landscape with long horizontal brushstrokes, in blocks of a limited colour palette that are mostly blues, greys and whites. The artist seems to be working reductively here, reducing the natural world down into its basic components. The brushstrokes feel brisk and intuitive. Take the clouds. They are built out of small strokes of white paint, set against a cerulean sky. You can almost feel the texture of the brush on the canvas. The colour palette gives the artwork a very pure quality, a little like looking at a fresco, or at a painting by Milton Avery. Both artists find their own ways to reduce forms to shapes and colours, and to present their vision of the world with its clarity and beauty.