Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov

B. Tcherkinsky Collection (acquired directly from the artist)

Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Gontcharova, Larionov, September-November, 1963, no. 105

Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Gontcharova, Larionov, 1963
Possibly, Conaissance des Arts, February 1961, p. 49

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting seems to be in lovely condition. It is unlined, most likely still on its original stretcher and possibly in its original frame. There is one small loss in the wait of the woman. The paint layer may be slightly dirty and is unvarnished, yet no restoration is recommended.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In the 1920s and 1930s, Mikhail Larionov began work on a series of still lifes, landscapes and figure compositions in which he employed an essentially monochromatic palette. He adopted a schematic approach to the figure and used a light, impressionistic touch in the application of his paint. Characteristic of his figure paintings from this period is the way in which he elongates his figures, pulling them out either across the length of a canvas—in the case of his reclining nudes—or up the canvas—as in Two Bathers with a Bird. In stylistic terms this composition is very typical of Larionov's work at this time.

The painting represents two nudes—not necessarily bathers, as its accepted title would suggest—and a bird in the forest, and it is a reprise of Larionov's Neo-primitive Seasons paintings of 1912. The imagery of a bird flying down to greet a naked figure was a crucial aspect of Larionov's Neo-primitive iconography in his Moscow years. Such imagery has been linked to Siberian Shamanism, where the naked figure is the shaman (shamans were both male and female) and the bird is a spirit-helper that takes possession of the shaman whilst they are in a trance state. The bird-spirit enables the shaman to engage in a mystical flight to the heavens or across the world. Larionov was not alone in holding such interests. From time to time we find shamanic imagery in the work of Goncharova, and the Russian poets Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, with whom Larionov worked at this time, referenced shamanic songs in their abstract "zaum'" sound poems. Even Kandinsky seems to have responded to the theme of Shamanism in his own work.

In the 1920s, Larionov returned to explore this imagery and from this period remain related drawings, gouaches, pochoir prints and full-scale oils, including Two Bathers with a Bird. This large painting, however, is a particularly splendid example of Larionov's later treatment of the theme.

It is now a widely known fact that Larionov was in the habit of 'predating' his works, which explains why the present composition has been dated both 1906 and 1909, when in fact it was clearly painted in the 1920s, when the artist was already living in France. In the early 1960s, when this painting was first exhibited, the chronological nature of Larionov's stylistic development was still largely unknown and curators, when organizing the artist's major retrospective in 1963, would have accepted Larionov's dating without question. It was only later in the 1970s that debate about the chronology of his work began to surface.