Portrait of Ida Rubinstein

An utter departure of his earlier Repin-esque impressionism -- minimalism, austerity, hard lines. I have always been fascinated by his colour solution here -- this complete identity of the background colour and the flesh colour, which creates an unusual combination of graphic quality with colour effects worthy of the accomplished colourist he was: blues and greens at the bottom, and a single dark-red spot -- her lips. Note also how the composition is completed by the apparently random darker triangle in the upper-left corner -- just cover it, and the painting is completely different. by Lena Levin