Ivan Ivanovich Godlevsky, 1908-1998

The family of the artist

G.V.Kekysheva, V.D.Liubimova, V.S.Kaplunov, S.G.Ryazanova, Ivan Godlevsky - Paintings, Petropol, Saint Petersburg, 2004, p. 84 (illustrated)

Evening by the Sea was painted in Gourzuf, on the Black Sea, during a series of travels which Ivan Godlevsky made to the Caucasus and the Crimea during the1960s and 1970s. These clearly left their mark on his palette; his colours became intense, more pure, reflecting his emotional reaction to the landscapes of the region. His paintings show the influence of Konchalovsky, Goncharova and Larionov, whose work Godlevsky associated with the joyful perception of life and the material tangibility of a subject. He believed it was the artist’s gift to see beauty in everything, ‘Let us look for […] fantasy in the ordinary and for the extraordinary in mediocrity’.