Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov

A gift from the artist to Galina Viktorovna Labunskaya (1893-1970) 
Thence by descent

The artist Galina Viktorovna Labunskaya was a friend of Larionov and a member of the same art societies in the early 1910s. The pair both took part in the remarkable 7^th Union of Youth exhibition which took place at 73 Nevsky Prospekt from 10 November 1913 – 12 January 1914, and included radical new work by Malevich, Filonov and Rozanova, as well as pieces by Tatlin, the Burliuk brothers and Kliun. Labunsakaya is also recorded as having appeared in No.4, the Moscow show organised by Larionov himself which opened on 23 March 1914 (see J.Howard, The Union of Youth, An artists’ society of the Russian avant-garde, Manchester University Press, 1992, ch.7). According to family history, it was at the time of these exhibitions that the present work was given by Larionov to Labunskaya.

The rough brushstrokes and muted palette of the present work bear close similarities to Larionov’s Tiraspol landscapes painted between 1904 and 1908, in particular La Pluie (fig.1, 1904, also 85 by 85cm) which shares the same exposed branches, the distinctive upward movement in the sage-green blades of grass in the foreground and the approximate blocks of colour to signify the canopy of the trees. More than perhaps any other artist of the period, Larionov was loath to sign his paintings: in the 1969 Larionov retrospective at Galerie de Paris, over 1/3 of the 50 oil paintings exhibited were unsigned, the majority of these dating to his pre-1910 period.

Labunskaya worked to develop new methods of teaching art in Russia and was a close friend of Elise Freinet, wife of Celestin Freinet, the noted French pedagogue and educational reformer who founded 'The Modern School Movement'. A cousin of Vera Pestel, Labunskaya was well acquainted with the Symbolist poet Maximilian Voloshin, and the artists Lev Zhegin, Vasily Chekrigin, Boris Ioganson and Pyotr Babichev. Her husband’s portrait was painted by Valentina Khodassevitch.