Birch Grove by Arkhip Kuindzhi

Birch Grove by Arkhip Kuindzhi

The painting attracts and admires its simplicity, national identity. The plot of the composition from the first moments becomes native, home cozy. The artist painted a small green glade, flooded with sunlight. Glade clears the stream, sometimes covered with duckweed. On one of its banks there are sleepy birches, illuminated by the sun and contrasting with the dark outlines of the forest in the background.

The picture captivates with its lightness, some decorative: there are almost no details or accents. Everything is very airy. Attention is drawn to only a few branches of birch trees, which the author of the picture paints with great love and realism.

Critics quite correctly find in the composition a certain Levitan style: Kuindzhi, creating the “Birch Grove”, counting on the imagination of his viewer, gives him only a general composition, the viewer thinks out the details himself.

It should also be noted the contrast of the combinations: snow-white, washed with light birch trunks shaded by a dark, sometimes almost black forest, which is depicted in the background.

Kuiji is considered to be the “artist of light”: the canvas “Birch Grove” is the best proof of this. A subtle combination of light and shade, sunny bunnies, galloping along tree trunks and darkened, delighting depth of water – all this conveys the contentment of the corner of the grove, the radiance of a summer day.

The picture was preceded by numerous sketches. All of them are united by the presence of birch trees on a dark background.

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