Artist – Petrov -Vodkin
Another group of paintings that Petrov-Vodkin worked in parallel with neoclassical in Paris in 1906-1908 seems to be a more direct development of experience accumulated at the Moscow School. The basis of such canvases as the “cafe” were live observations. The presented scene is ordinary, and is deprived of any plot tie – the figures of several Parisians in the interior of one of the fashionable metropolitan establishments, like a tea ladish salon called the Elisean fields at the end of the 19th century. The artist does not burden himself with the study of the depths of the female soul. He simply admires his heroines, as he would admire a flower, blossoming under the warm rays of the sun, or a ptach, chirping on a branch.
The ladies are charming, mysterious and unpredictable, idly boring and curious, flirty and unstable. Their world on the canvas, simple and refined in its warm atmosphere, attracts many men.
Igor Severyanin admitted:
“I like to call in goldfill for a cup of tea in a wife-club,
Where tasty ladies about secular squabbles and quarrels gossip,
Where the stupid has the right to hear not stupid, but the smart one is certainly stupid … “,
And yet, among this “paradise” garden of visitors to the cafe, there is one that is especially attracted to the artist. She is like a blovsk “beautiful lady”. Its features organically and easily merge into the memorable and recognizable image of Muse Petrov-Vodkin-Frenchwoman of Serbian descent Maria Iovanovich, who has become his love and friend for life.
