Alexei Isupov (Alessio Issupoff). Older Brother (Three Faces, Uzbeks), 1921

This unusual tempera painting stands out from Isupov’s “Pre-Raphaelite cycle.” Thematically, it fits between the two subseries of his 1921 works: the family portraits (Kyrgyz Family, Father with Children) and the rites of passage (Kyrgyz Bride, Just Married). The dramatic, mournful figure of the woman tells us that this is not merely a family portrait but a genre painting. The figure of the aggrieved youth in the background also testifies to that. The scene’s dynamic is created by the conflict between the melancholic, detached expression of the youth in the center and the dramatic gestures of his mother and younger brother. We might be witnessing a family drama. The boy in the foreground could represent Jesus, with Mary and Jacob, or the protagonist of an unfinished story by Uzbek writer Abdulla Qodiriy (who was executed in 1938 during Stalin’s purges). In Qodiriy’s story, a family makes the young protagonist renounce his true love for fear of public shame. Isupov left no notes that could shed any light on the drama in the painting, and apart from the work’s mood we have no reason to read into it a theme that is clearly present in Usto Mumin’s “love cycle” of the 1920s. However, the mood that invites a comparison between the two artists is very obvious. The rounded faces of the two brothers and their eyes and lips are clearly androgynous: the only element that distinguishes them from their mother is her hair. The rose behind the boy’s ear connects him to the protagonists of Mumin’s “love cycle.” Intonationally, the work is also close to Daniil Stepanov’s Samarkand paintings and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s works of the 1910s. It combines the tension of a love drama with the meditative focused expressions of its characters, their gaze at the viewer with an intense internal dialogue.

Boris Chukhovich