While the 1910s were a period of Sturm und Drang for the artists of the avant-garde, their colleague Alexander Gerasimov spent this decade engaged in quests for his own place on the path of traditions. The future classic of Soviet painting was influenced by the Critical Realists, believing their social pathos to still be relevant to Russian painting. A former student of Abram Arkhipov and Konstantin Korovin, he preferred the moderate Impressionism of the Union of Russian Artists. Gerasimov painted what he knew and liked best – the small towns and endless steppe roads of his native Tambov Province. Before the revolution, images of horses played an important role in Gerasimov’s motifs of the Russian provinces. This frieze-like painting depicts a monotonous chain of carts returning to a village by the light of the first star. The young provincial artist breathed new life into a motif often employed in the classical canvases of Illarion Pryanishnikov and Abram Arkhipov.

Gerasimov Alexander

Gerasimov, Alexander Mikhailovich
1881, Kozlov — 1963, Moscow
Painter, graphic artist, theatrical designer, architect. Studied painting (1903-10) and architecture (1910-15) at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and worked at Konstantin Korovin's studio. Contributed to exhibitions (from 1906).