Sunlight on the Hoar-Frost.
1876-1890.
Oil on oil-cloth. 24,4 x 27,2.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
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Patches of Moonlight in a Forest. Winter.
1898-1908.
Paper on a canvas, oil.
39 x 53,5.
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
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Kuindzhi's investigations of the air medium yielded a good result-he considerably enriched his palette and evolved a peculiar decorative image, since his atmosphere did not dissolve objects but, on the contrary, added to them a new decorative luminosity and colour.
The characteristic trend to decorativeness began in Kuindzhi's winter landscapes dating from the 1880s. In these works the artist continued his search for a romantic idiom embodied in a decorative pictorial system that comprised the heightened colour, fluent silhouette, elaborate rendition of contour, etc.). The »decorative wave» represents the main trend of the artist's endeavour during the »silent» period.
Decorative transformations in Kuindzhi's art were connected with his plein-air exploration of nature {Winter. Spots of Light on the Roofs of Peasant Houses, 1890-1895; Spots of Sunlight on the Hoarfrost, 1876-1890). In these works, the real effect of a snow-bound forest and coloured shadows was achieved by a soft, sinuous linear design and highlighted colour tints. The crown of these developments was a small painting, Spots of Moonlight in the Forest. Winter (1898-1908). Here the nature lies under the spell of an unearthly colour-an impression arising from the heightened brightness of the natural moon colour, which seems to be mixing the lights of the two world, that of the moon, the real one, and an irreal one, coming, as it were, from some cosmic source. In this period Kuindzhi's work was apparently influenced by the aesthetics of Art Nouveau; he was one of its Russian originators in the field of landscape painting.
Anna Akhmatova
The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And with large drops of dew
Were sprinkled her feet.
For long did I ask of her
To wait for winter with me,
But she said, "The grave is here,
How can you breathe, you see?"
I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.
Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.
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