The artist is Grigoryev
Boris Grigoryev, known in Russia since the beginning of the 20th century by his portraits and scenes from Parisian life, watched with interest what was happening. He himself wanted to personally feel the mood of the people, find answers to his questions about the role of the 1917 revolution in the life of the country.
In 1919, Grigoryev made a trip to the Russian hinterland, where “I tried to see the whole people, find its origins and I saw,” writes the artist, “the country called that was called „Lykovo land “”.
It was these impressions that formed the basis of the cycle of paintings and drawings under the general name “Rasei”. They have neither irony, no satire, nor hatred. These works are not portraits of specific characters. They are a generalization, a metaphor expressing the author’s deep thought about the fate of the depicted, their future.
In the film “Peasant land”, in complete agreement with the author’s name, the Earth occupies almost the entire space of the canvas, panoramic opening, unfolding in breadth and deeper. Large -scale enlarged figures of the peasants in the foreground seem to germinate from its giving way. I recall Gorky’s words about the peasant and the earth, “which he mystically loves, unshakably believes and feels that with this earth he is strongly soldered by his flesh that she is his blood property …”.
Filling their peasant land to the very horizon, the heroes of the picture sternly, mournfully and incredulously look into the face of the future. The image of a girl, repeatedly depicted by Grigoryev in full -scale drawings, is especially expressive. Her gaze, from birth, broken by the weight of her life, pursued the artist. But in a picturesque presentation, this scorched shower seems to be fertilized with color: a freckled face framed by sharp, like ears, with mowing, absorbed the colors of the bread field into its color, becoming it "reflection"; Eyes tumbled over the waters of the waters.