decisions became
BOY WITH A TUBE by Pablo Picasso
The most expensive painting in the world?
In 2004, at an Sotheby’s auction, an unknown buyer acquired the work of Pablo Picasso “Boy with a Pipe” (Garson and la Pipe) in 1905 for $ 104.168 million. The starting price of work – 70 million dollars – an unprecedented amount for the art market. The high cost of the work is explained, firstly, by the impeccable provenance of the painting, and secondly, by its uniqueness: Picasso’s early works appear on the market extremely rarely, almost all the pictures of the pink and blue periods are in museum collections.
The Boy with the Pipe was written in 1905, when the artist lived and worked, and very successfully, in Paris. Nevertheless, on Picasso’s “creative calendar” this period is the earliest, pre-subist and, by the way, the most valuable. The canvas belongs to the rare for any master category of iconic paintings: it marked the artist’s transition from the “blue” period to the “pink” period. Continue reading
Secrets of famous paintings
Works of art often become particularly popular if they are legends about them or if they unexpectedly turn out to be not what they seem at first glance. “Kultura.RF” reveals the secrets of famous – and not very – Russian paintings.
“The Nun” by Ilya Repin
A young girl in strict monastic clothes looks at the viewer thoughtfully from a portrait. The image is classic and familiar – he probably would not have aroused interest among art historians if it were not for the memoirs of Lyudmila Alekseevna Shevtsova-Spore – the niece of Repin’s wife. They found a curious story.
Sophia Repina, nee Shevtsova, posed for the “Nun” Ilya Repina. Continue reading
Oil painting – from old masters to modern
Also paints with a transparency effect were invented, thanks to which the previous paint layers are translucent, and I get a glow – a glaze technique.
Artists of that era studied the chemical properties of oil paints in order to properly apply a layer and prevent their damage in the future.
The 14th millennium for Holland and Germany was marked by the birth of a special form of oil painting.
With the help of the artist Jan van Eyck, painting acquired brilliance and brightness, thanks to which everyone believed in the existence of some kind of secret technique. Continue reading