1913–1915
oil on canvas
117 õ 154
Filonov believed that works of art are living organisms with their own life and own share of energy. Therefore the artist does not apply onto but rather crowds into the canvas the “growing” forms of this organism.
In Filonov’s works there is almost never an independent background. The canvases are thickly “populated” by people and by organic as well as inorganic nature. He creates a feeling that this is some fragment of the world in which everything is connected to everything else.
In his composition Ships, people are at the same time building ships and sailing on them to unknown distant lands. Men, women, children…they are all waiting for something, hoping for something, afraid of something. Their faces are multiplied, and some run up against one another while others seem to be dividing.
People are sailing on small boats and rowing, brushing against the roofs of houses, while the wind fills out the sails of the large ships that are sailing out beyond the boundaries of the canvas.
at 10, Krymsky Val, Hall 9
