Constantinople 1910

Martiros Sarian made this painting, Constantinople, with oil on canvas, and it’s currently residing in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Look at how he uses these planes of intense, almost clashing colour to build up the image! It's like he's building a stage set more than painting from reality. The materiality of the paint is something else; the brushstrokes are clearly visible, thick and deliberate, giving the painting a tactile, almost sculptural quality. I'm drawn to the way the ochre road in the foreground meets the buildings on the left, that deep, cool green, those bold contrasts. It’s like Sarian is really pushing against the edges of the canvas, forcing everything forward. In a way, Sarian reminds me of Matisse, maybe someone like Milton Avery, but with a bit more bite. It's a conversation across cultures and time, a reminder that art is an ongoing experiment, where meaning is always in flux, never pinned down.