Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky

Waldemar George, Paris
A gift from the above to Monsieur et Madame Louis Gautier-Chaumet in 1930 on the occasion of their marriage
Thence by descent to the present owner

Moscow, Salon on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, Exhibition of Works by the Group of Mir iskusstva Artists, 27 December 1917 - 2 February 1918, no.61
Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, Exhibition of Works by P.P.Konchalovsky, April 1922, no.78

Exhibition catalogue Exhibition of Works by P.P.Konchalovsky, Moscow, April 1922, listed under works for 1917, no.78
K.Frolova, Konchalovskii, Khudozhestvennoe nasledie, Moscow: Iskusstva, 1964, listed p.101 no.224
Exhibition catalogue Unknown Konchalovsky, Moscow: State Tretyakov Gallery, 2002, p.106 listed under works exhibited at the 1917-1918 Mir iskusstva exhibition under no.61, p.103 and 106

Structural Condition The canvas is unlined with an elaborate inscription on the reverse of the stained canvas and is attached to what would appear to be the original keyed wooden stretcher.The turnover and tacking edges have been strengthened with a thin strip-lining and this is ensuring an even and secure structural support. Paint surface The paint surface has an even varnish layer and inspection under ultraviolet light shows retouchings around the framing edges predominantly on the upper and lower horizontal framing edges and only very small scattered retouchings on the main body of the composition. The largest of these are two areas approximately 2 cm in diameter in the white boarder running parallel to the right vertical framing edge. There are some minor losses on the framing sight edges. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition and no further work is required.
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This vibrant still life of traditional Tatar earthenware, silver and brass vessels was created at the high point of Petr Konchalovsky's experiments with cubism. Appearing in public for the first time in over 80 years, its rediscovery and publication provides an important addition to the existing body of work from this fundamental period in the artist's oeuvre.

The offered work was originally owned by Waldemar George (1893-1970), a Polish émigré to Paris in 1911, who soon established himself as one of the most influential art critics of his time, with his articles regularly appearing in the leading art journals of France and Germany. He was an ardent supporter of young independent artists and is widely acknowledged as having discovered Chaim Soutine. In 1930 Waldemar George presented Tatar Still Life to Louis Gautier-Chaumet, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper La Presse where he also worked as an art critic. It has remained in the Gautier-Chaumet family ever since.

Konchalovsky's pre-Revolutionary still lifes are considered amongst his most accomplished. They reflect the enduring quest of his entire artistic output, and one of the central principles of the Jack of Diamonds group of which Konchalovsky was a founder-member: the artist's struggle to tangibly convey the essence of objects.

The still life provided the greatest scope for formal experimentation, which often resulted in a disregard for the external appearance of the objects of study. However, Konchalovsky was drawn towards a more moderate form of Cubism, 'driven by a craving for the organic world... and its physical plenitude', (J.Bowlt, 'Sense and Sensuality: The Art of Petr Konchalovsky' in Unknown Konchalovsky, Moscow, 2002, p.45). Rather than disembody or dissolve the objects in his still lifes, Konchalovsky defines their presence on the canvas. In the offered work, he reinforces the solidity of the roughly-forged metal pitchers and thickly-glazed ceramic bowl by creating strong colour contrasts between the objects and the table, pushing the background right up to their edges so that they are propelled to the fore like a cut-out.

As with his still lifes from the early 1910s, Konchalovsky returns to the cardinal tenets of Cézannism: the table is set parallel to the viewer and the focus of the composition is at the centre. But it is Picasso and Braque who inform the works of this period, which are executed in a reduced palette of cool greys, red-browns, greens and ochres and are starkly faceted in a manner closer to analytic Cubism (fig.2).

Konchalovksy's work from the middle of this decade heralds a new preoccupation with the treatment of an object's surface to convey its outward character: 'Attention to texture can arise only after the artist's painting manner has matured, and with me this happened only around 1916. .. after Still life with Agave I found it practically impossible to avoid the matter of texture, no matter what I painted - attention to surface became one of the main elements of my style'.  From the 'meaty' brown of the heavy wooden table top to the cross-hatching in the heavy patterned fabric hanging along the right hand side and the roughly sketched-in forms of the metal vessels to suggest the light reflecting off their uneven exteriors, the offered lot is a prime example of this approach.

Tatar Still Life can be appreciated as one of Konchalovsky's earliest works where the brushstroke plays a key role in conveying form accurately, stylistically anticipating the still life Samovar of the same year (fig.3) and his highly acclaimed Portrait of the Violinist G.Romashkov from 1918. The treatment of Tatar Still Life is characteristic of what Pospelov terms 'artistic shorthand'; the composition is built up of short, dynamic brushstrokes applied with almost 'frenetic impatience' to convey the impression that the world is 'forever shifting in plane and volume and that the colours of an object [are] as fickle as human behaviour' (J.Bowlt, idem, p.46).

The objects seem to vibrate, teetering on the table top, whose perspective has been exaggerated to suggest an unstable upwards slant, and the components of the still life appear to spill out of the pictorial space. It is this vitality and spontaneity of impression, Benois argued, which set the work of the Konchalovsky and his fellow avant-garde artists apart: 'I do not know in contemporary Western painting of anything healthier, fresher and simpler yet at the same time more decorative than their still lifes... household items saturated with the most authentic taste, art and painterly charm'  (A.Benois writing in a review of the Exhibition of Modern Russian Painting at the salon of N.Dobychina, 1916).