Leonid Terentievich Chupiatov

Acquired by the family of the present owner in the early 1970s

The canvas has been lined. There is a layer of light surface dirt and there are fine lines of craquelure throughout. UV light reveals spots of retouching in places. Held in a modern black painted wooden frame.
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Leonid Chupiatov studied at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists' School of Drawing and at the studios of Y. Tsionglinsky and M. Bershtein.  From 1916, he studied at E. Zvantseva's school under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, who played an important role in his artistic development. 

 

Chupiatov's well-known still lifes in the State Russian Museum collection employ the same elevated view-point familiar from classic still lifes by Petrov-Vodkin.  But Chupiatov's colours and composition, even in the 1920s, differ significantly from those of his tutor: his canvasses are even more dynamic and diverge even further from the standard interpretations of this genre and there is a bold use of black in his work.  He unites the severity of coloured, regular geometric forms with an almost Baroque-like whirlwind of other elements. The colour red appears in the majority of his paintings, beginning with The Paint Mixer (1926), who carries a red dish filled with paint, and becomes characteristic in his mature work. 

 

In Staircase, the painter openly experiments with the representation of space.  The unusual perspective, directed down into the depths of the staircase, gives the mundane scene an extraordinary, vertiginous dynamism and unease.  The diagonal lines and acute angles of converging forms; the changing rhythms of the edges of the staircase; the strangely bulging window and the measured pace of the descending, isolated figures all together create a restless atmosphere, reminiscent of the agonizing suspense in big screen thrillers.

 

The artist also used landscapes glimpsed through a window and from a height in his stage design for the ballet Red Whirlwind at the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in 1924.  This element, and also the stylistic similarities to the well-known picture Interior (private collection, Saint Petersburg) allow us to date Staircase to the mid-1920s.

Through the unusual colour combinations and emphatically disturbing composition of his canvasses and set designs, Chupiatov expresses the tense drama of his world view.

 

We are grateful to Dr. Natalya Adaskina, head of the department for twentieth century graphic arts of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow for providing this note.