On the Volga 1926

Boris Kustodiev made this woodcut print, On the Volga, sometime in his career. This is a landscape almost entirely in black and white, save for the natural paper peeking through. I love to think about how woodcuts are a process - there's the carving away to make a sort of sculptural relief, and then the inking and printing of the block. You can see all the marks of the process here. See how the dense and energetic hatch marks create a sense of texture? It’s like the artist is channeling the energy of the river and the sky. The dramatic rays of sunlight piercing through the heavy clouds, and the simple yet powerful composition. They're kind of reminiscent of the German Expressionist woodcuts of artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Both share this raw, emotional intensity, this bold way of capturing the world. With Kustodiev, there's this sense of the Russian landscape, a place of both beauty and drama. I think this piece shows us how an image can capture so much mood with so few elements.