In the painting “Oaks”, the image against the light gives an enormous oak crown an ornamental silhouette and flatten it, like a bas-relief. The color masses leave the impression of immensity, significance, epic grandeur. The original character of the “Oaks” does not, however, lose its connection with reality.
The artist accumulated impressions from the nature of the Crimea. Arkady Rylov remembers oak forests in the estate of Kuindzhi, rising to the foot of Yaila. At the same time, the image goes beyond the limits of real certainty. The oaks seem to lose their proportionality to the usual notions of the scale of objects…
Such hyperbolism of forms gives the artistic work an accentuated sublimity. Kuindji’s artistic thinking coincides with the characteristic trends of art of the early twentieth century, which transfer the center of gravity of content from the material image of life qualities and phenomena to their subjectively spiritual expression through emotional concentration of the image.
In romantic, as if abstract “Oaks” modernity is present in its most acute problems. In the mighty and majestic trees, the eternal forces of nature, as opposed to the variability of life, are embodied.
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