Still Life. Checkers and oranges. 1916

Pyotr Konchalovsky made this painting, Still Life, Checkers and oranges, with oil on canvas. He builds up his forms with small strokes of contrasting colour, using greens, yellows, browns, and oranges to make, well, oranges, among other things. This feels like painting as a process of trying things out, of experimenting, rather than illustrating something preconceived. There’s a kind of chunky materiality in this still life. Everything feels solid, like it could be picked up. The white cloth is especially interesting: it's not pure white, but a mix of greys, blues, and tans that somehow add up to whiteness. Look at the thick impasto, the way Konchalovsky has daubed the paint on the canvas. This gives the objects weight and presence. The checkerboard pattern is so vivid and present. It suggests a game in progress, and the tilted plane of the table adds to the feeling of instability. Konchalovsky's work has always been in conversation with that of Paul Cézanne, who also used simple objects to explore the materiality of paint and the nature of perception. Both artists invite us to slow down and really see the world around us, in all its messy, imperfect beauty.