Nikolai Konstantinovich Kalmakov

Paris, Musée-galerie de la Seita, Kalmakoff, 26 March 26 - 17 May 1986, No 18 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue)

The board is sound but has slighly warped. The grain of the wood is visible throughout. There is a layer of surface dirt and light paint abrasions in places. There are frame abrasions along the edges. UV light reveals a few small spots of retuoching along the edges and elsewhere. Held in a gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Adonis, the young lover of Venus, died while hunting a wild boar. Hearing his final death cry, Venus flew to the gorged body of her lover and mourned him aloud, crying "There will be an everlasting token of my grief, Adonis. Every year the scene of your death will be staged anew, and lamented with wailing cries..." (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk X,)

 

Kalmakov's fascinating painting The Death of Adonis underscores the artist's love of the theatre and its transformative possibilities. It is part of a group of self portraits Kalmakov painted in the first half of the 1920s depicting himself in biblical or mythological guises, including John the Baptist and Narcissus. Presenting idealised images of the human form, they project the extreme asceticism and introspection typical of Kalmakov's works from this period.