Vladimir Davidovich Baranov-Rossiné, 1888-1944

Paris, Galerie Chauvelin, V.Baranoff-Rossiné, 1970, No.17;
London, Rutland Gallery, V. Baranoff-Rossiné, 1888-1942: Retrospective, 1970, No.72 
Paris, Galerie Verneil Saints Peres, Baranoff-Rossiné 1888-1944, 1984, Cat No.44 titled La mère et l'enfant, p.34, reproduced in colour on the cover of the catalogue

Andrei Sarabianov, Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, Moscow: Trefoil Press, 2002, titled Madonna and Child, p. 187, illustrated

Original canvas. There are two small flakes of paint loss to the top left corner. The paint surface is fairly clean. UV ligth reveals some retouching along the edges and further spots of retouching in places. Held in a gold painte dframe and unexamined out of frame.
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Mother and Child is an important work from Baranov-Rossiné's late career, when he experimented with Surrealism and biomorphic forms—forms that, while abstract on their own, seem to evoke the shape of human bodies or plants in the context of a composition. Such motifs were popular in modern painting and sculpture of the 1930s, and were best known in the works of Joan Miró and Jean Arp.

Baranov-Rossiné was living in Paris at this time, where he was promoting his most important invention, the "Optophonic piano," a device that responds to the sound of a piano by projecting forms and colours onto a screen. His paintings from this period are exceedingly rare, and they reflect not only the progressive styles of his contemporaries, but also his personal fascination with colour. In Mother and Child, he adjusts his palette to bring life to his forms, implementing soft, fleshy colours for his Madonna and Christ figures, attributing them with human features against a vibrant and abstracted background.