1926
oil on canvas
106 х 69

The image of reality in the painting is not typical of Soviet art in the 1920s. The dim sky wedged between houses symbolises not some bright future – the theme of many works of this period – but a cold and indifferent infinity. A girl standing in a courtyard that is pressed by the surrounding houses, alongside young saplings, looks at a balloon flying off into endless space. In the windows we see ordinary human life: a mother with child, a woman combing her hair, a suicide. This is not a metaphor for a happy tomorrow and not some romanticizing of reality like so many other paintings of this period. Instead it is a sad tale about the present, about the daily life that is not running at all exuberantly.