Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov

The tacking edges of this canvas have been reinforced, yet the canvas itself is unlined. The paint layer is most likely slightly dirty and seems to be un-retouched. The varnish has blanched slightly, in the background particularly, there are a few losses in the pink pigment of the hanging cloth by the onions and another small loss in the lower left corner. The remainder of the paint layer is stable and in excellent state. Attempts should be made to clean the picture carefully given the delicate paint layer. Held in a modern silvered wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Still Life with Pumpkins and Pan is stylistically close to Pimenov's work from the 1950s and 1960s, principally his famous still life series People's Things and Everyday Objects, which share his developed painterly technique derived from French Impressionism (fig.1). Freer and more impulsive than his earlier work, the fragments of ordinary life on these canvases appear unpremeditated; the play of light on the varied matt and polished surfaces bright and lively.

The present composition is characteristically built on different shades of white mixed with warm ochre, yellow and red tones. The hanging onions with their golden sheen are a recurring motif in his still lifes of this period, and become the centrepiece of Onions for the Winter (1968). But despite their mundane origins, the objects in the present work radiate light - from the characteristically Soviet white enamel cup and pot, gleaming with the vertical lines of pure white, to the starchy creases of the dishcloth and reflections of the fruit and tilework.

From the 1930s onwards, the severity of Pimenov's early work of OST (Society of Easel Painters) and post-Dadaist German influences fade from his work. 'I want to make lyrical and optimistic art' he wrote. 'The world is filled with poetry and beauty, which we tend to miss. It is my task as an artist, and also the duty of man in work and in daily life to reveal the beauty of the day to day and the wonder of mundane things'.

We are grateful to Tatiana Levina of the State Tretyakov Gallery for providing additional cataloguing information.