The girl in sarafan 1928

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin painted "The Girl in Sarafan" using oils to create a portrait that feels both intimate and a bit distant. Look at the colours – the muted reds and blues create a calm, almost melancholic mood. Petrov-Vodkin's brushstrokes are visible; you can see how he layered the paint to build up the colours and forms. The texture is smooth in some areas, like the face, but rougher in the background. The face seems to be emerging from the canvas. Take the model's hands. They’re so subtly rendered, with delicate touches of colour, but they feel so heavy and present, leading your eye up to the face and then out to the background. The artist uses very simple tools, but these are imbued with a world of feeling! You could easily put this painting alongside a Morandi. It shares a similar approach to still life, reducing the objects to simple forms. However, it is uniquely Petrov-Vodkin because of its strange spatial quality. It doesn't seem to obey laws of perspective in quite the same way. It shows art is an ongoing conversation, each artist adding their own voice.