PETR PETROVICH KONCHALOVSKY | HARVEST

Private collection, Paris

Leon Gildesgame, Mount Kisco, New York

Private collection, New York

Sotheby's London, Russian Art Evening, 26 November 2007, lot 37

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

V.Nikolsky, Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky, Moscow: Vsekokhudozhnik, 1936, p.41 illustrated, p.11 listed

Konchalovsky. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964, p.108 listed as zhi 390

Exhibition catalogue Russian Avant-garde Art from the Schreiber Collection, New York, 1984, illustrated

Exhibition catalogue The Russian Experiment: Master Works and Contemporary Works, New York, 1990, pp.8-9 illustrated

Konchalovsky spent the summers of 1922 and 1923 near Moscow in the village of Krylatskoye, where he continued experimenting with landscape and painted his first genre compositions. Dating to 1923, Harvest is one of only a handful of genre paintings depicting the harvest and village life of Krylatskoye.

The early 1920s mark an important stylistic turning point for Konchalovsky – the artist is starting to distance himself from cubism and Cézannism and shift towards a more explicitly Russian, realistic tradition, paying greater attention to real people and their everyday life. It is at this time that Konchalovsky achieves widespread national recognition: ‘In 1922 the Tretyakov Gallery hosted my first solo exhibition. The following years I worked with great energy and showed my paintings at ten solo exhibitions. In 1922 I was awarded the title of Honoured Artist’ – he later recalled. In the words of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the critic and People's Commissariat for Education, 'never before has Konchalovsky shown himself to be such a simple, sincere, joyful and skillful master.'