Daniil Stepanov. Bacha, 1923

An image of this painting can be found in the catalogue of the 1926 Venice Biennale. According to Daniil Stepanov’s family, the bacha was painted after the artist’s son, Pavel. The title does not fully correspond to the content, as the painting features not one but two young men. The posture of the half-naked youth in the foreground communicates sensual bliss, while the look of the seated boy betrays his fascination with his companion. It appears that this work illustrates the same story as that in Usto Mumin’s cycle of the 1920s, with its similarity to the garden and bathing pool scenes from Mumin’s Pomegranate Zeal. Its composition, which features three “horizons,” brings to mind the “spherical perspective” developed by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin in the late 1910s. This detail shows that the influences and connections between the artists of Stepanov’s circle were not limited to their choice of subjects.

Boris Chukhovich