1935
oil on canvas
99,8 õ 68
His contemporaries called Filonov a “witness of the invisible.” The artist believed that even an apple tree cannot be drawn unless you imagine the whole process of its organic growth.
Filonov wrote that it was not interesting for him to depict trousers and a hat of a man, though it would be interesting to try to express what was going on inside the man’s head. During the course of nearly his entire creative career, he repeatedly worked on this theme, which cannot easily find a visual image. Shostakovich’s First Symphony is one of its interpretations.
Filonov explained his method in the following manner. Artists of the realistic school draw directly what they see from a definite perspective. The method of Analytic Art presupposes depiction of any object from various perspectives. That is to say, depictions of a single object from various points of view seem to pile on top of one another and form a complex drawing.
Filonov conveys the invisible processes going on both in nature and in human thinking using nonfigurative shapes at the bottom of which arise figurative images. Thus in his composition Shostakovich’s First Symphony, from the depths of nonfigurative forms there rise to the surface of the canvas human faces.
