Bathing
Tkachev, Aleksei and Sergei
1922 -, 1925 -
Bathing
Oil on canvas
83 x 144 cm
Signed by both brothers bottom left
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection Germany
LITERATURE:
Certificate from Vitali Manin, former Director of the Tretyakov Gallery
Certificate from the artists
Aleksei and Sergei Tkachev in 1963
In Woman bathing a women is washing herself in front of a log cabin in a snowy village. A mother sits with a child in the cottage doorway looking on and a further woman walks by carrying a bucket full of logs. The scene is bathed in pale winter sunshine and the shadows are full of blues and mauves. The Tkachev brothers delighted in such simple portrayals of village life.
The Tkachev brothers are considered amongst the most important of the Moscow School of painters that dominated Russian painting after the Second World War.
This golden period of Russian painting sometimes known as the second generation of Russian Impressionism developed in the more relaxed atmosphere in the Soviet Union that arrived after the death of Stalin in 1953. There is a realism and honesty that pervades their work that speaks to viewers in a universal language that transcends language and culture. As the brothers themselves have said, “Our paintings tell our life stories. The subjects are not fantasies, they all spring from real people, real events, and from stories told to us by our elders. Part of our souls are in each one.”
The brothers had a major retropective of their work held at the Tretyakov gallery in 2011. For some of the works in that exhibition see:-
http://englishrussia.com/2011/04/20/two-brothers-one-passion/
