Clouds over the Black Sea--Crimea
Boris Anisfeld
European Art
On View:
Boris Anisfeld’s canvas presents a vertiginous view of the Black Sea from the top of the Ayu-Dag mountain in southern Ukraine. The viewer has the sensation of being placed in midair, looking down through billowing clouds at an expanse of blue water, in the midst of which is a small boat. Although the scene represents a vast space, the artist’s complex composition challenges the illusion of depth in traditional landscapes by flattening the elements—cloud, land, and horizon—onto a single plane.
This painting was included in the 1906 Salon d’Automne in Paris in the Russian galleries organized by the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, for whom Anisfeld designed stage sets and costumes. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the artist came to the United States, and within a year the Brooklyn Museum hosted his first American one-person exhibition.
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
1906
DIMENSIONS
49 1/2 × 56 in. (125.7 × 142.2 cm)
frame: 56 1/2 × 63 1/2 × 3 1/2 in. (143.5 × 161.3 × 8.9 cm)
(show scale)
SIGNATURE
Signed lower right: "Boris Anisfeld"
ACCESSION NUMBER
33.416
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Boris Anisfeld in memory of his wife
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Boris Anisfeld (Bal?i, present–day Moldova (former Russian Empire), 1879–1973, Waterford, Connecticut). Clouds over the Black Sea--Crimea, 1906. Oil on canvas, 49 1/2 × 56 in. (125.7 × 142.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Boris Anisfeld in memory of his wife, 33.416 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 33.416_PS11.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 33.416_PS11.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2022
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