Composition (A Raid) 1931

Pavel Filonov’s painting, Composition (A Raid), is a wild landscape of human figures built from tiny brushstrokes, a mosaic of looking. I imagine him hunched over this canvas, obsessively adding detail upon detail, letting the forms emerge from a sea of marks. It must have been so intense to work like that, building up the image bit by bit, a real act of devotion! There is a particular face near the bottom that really grabs me - the eyes are so still and confronting. I'm compelled to think about it and what it's really trying to say! I am reminded a bit of Philip Guston, in that both artists create these worlds that are both alluring and deeply unsettling. You get the sense that the artist is trying to grapple with something huge, something almost too big to put into words. It's like they're saying, "Here, look at this mess, look at what it means to be human." And, as viewers, we are invited to join in the mess, the conversation, the ongoing process of trying to make sense of it all.