Artist – Petrov -Vodkin
1927 Self -portrait is distinguished by external asceticism and marginal internal composure. It is quite obvious in the desire to solve the issue of the attitude of the personality and time. The plastic power of the skull, along the sculptural, spread out of the face, tightly closed lips and a keen eye – sees, feeling, knowledgeable. In the artist’s seeing the future of the artist’s gaze, there is a bewitching innovation inherent in the chosen ones, to those who visited the world in his “fateful minutes” to heal the blind.
Before us is a person who is aware of his responsibility to the upcoming generations. Creating a new art for the new Russia, the artist believed that it should not only delight the viewer – a peasant, a soldier, a worker, but also “act organically on their cells, on their blood balls …”, in other words, “improve the human appearance”. In one of the letters to his wife in these years, he wrote: “Now there is still no genuine culture, but when it comes, it will be a good thing. While they are still like a sponge that absorbs knowledge, and only knowledge can develop the brain, and when the head is full to capacity, the soul will be revealed widely and brightly … Organic culture is my dear and precious dream. But only our Elena and her peers may be able to achieve her “.
And in confirmation of these words in the “self -portrait” behind the artist’s back from the cosmic blue of space, the head of his five -year -old daughter Elena appears as a sign of the new future humanity – the bearer of higher knowledge and spirituality.
