Leonid Terentievich Chupyatov

Moscow, Moscow Union of Artists, 1978
Moscow, Gallery of the Soviet Culture Foundation, Obraz russkoi zhenshchiny, July 1987
Moscow, Novyi Ermitzh, Genii Rossii, 2002
Moscow, Kournikova Gallery, Rakurs Chupyatova, 2013

Exhibition catalogue Rakurs Chupyatova, St Petersburg: Petronius, 2013, p.81 illustrated

The cardboard has been laid down on canvas. The surface is covered in a layer of dirt. There are creases and tears to the upper left corner that have been repaired. A crease to the lower right corner has also been restored, as has a vertical tear from the bottom edge to the left of the right shoe. The edges of the cardboard are uneven and there are pinholes in places. Inspection under UV reveals retouches to the aforementioned areas in the upper left and lower right corners as well as to the left of the right shoe. There are further retouches to the upper left corner, to the top right of the cube as well as some scattered minor retouches. Held in modern gold-painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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A favourite student of Petrov-Vodkin, Chupyatov has only recently received the attention he deserves. The relative obscurity of one of the greatest Russian painters of the 1920s and 1930s can be explained in part by the fact that very few of his paintings survive. In early December 1941, shortly before his death during the Siege of Leningrad, the artist wrote a desperate appeal for help to the artist Mikhail Tsekhanovsky: ‘I am dying as an artist. All my works, painted honestly and selflessly during the last 30 years are perishing (…) Help me – support me, let me live with your help a little longer among my work and paint a little more’ (quoted in Rakurs Chupyatova, 2013, p.50). Many of his paintings unfortunately did not survive the war either.

It is also the case of course, that Chupyatov was working in a climate that was hostile to him and his art. He was deeply religious artist living under an atheist regime, and his approach to painting was highly individual at a time when the collective reigned and experimentation was discouraged. It is unsurprising that Soviet art historians largely ignored Chupyatov and little about him was recorded. Dating from the 1920s, Girl on a Cube is a striking example of his distinctive approach to paint surfaces: thickly painted planes contrast with areas of thin, almost transparent paint and even bare areas. The red background has a translucent quality to it, as though the sitter is not only lit from above as suggested by the shadows on the face, but also from behind.