Ivan Karpoff (1898-1970) - Scena di Mercato Russo

AUTHOR

Ivan Karpoff (1898-1970) pseudonym of Ivan Michailovič Karpov, born in Novočerkassk, Russia. Brought to painting at a very young age, he graduated from the Rostov Art High School and continued his studies at the Kiev Academy of Fine Arts, which he had to abandon in 1916 because of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. An emigrant to Italy, in 1925 he settled permanently in Milan, where he remained until his death, which occurred on July 6, 1970. In the Lombard capital he completed his training at the Brera Academy until 1929 under the guidance of Ambrogio Antonio Alciati, where he met the painter Julia Ivanovna Lund, whom he would marry in 1930.

Karpoff’s style blends the melancholic lyricism of the Russian landscape tradition with naturalism and Lombard late impressionism. Painting mainly in oil on canvas and panel, often from life, he adopts a “first-hand” technique made of rapid, fresh and paste-like brushstrokes, capable of immediately conveying the luminous and atmospheric vibrations. His intimate and emotional poetics ranges from the landscapes of memory of Russia, with snow-covered steppe, sleds and galloping horses, to Italian views: scenes of Milan’s Navigli, Alpine valleys, Venetian lagoons, seascapes and vivid floral still lifes.

From the Thirties the artist achieved wide critical and public success, exhibiting in important Italian and foreign galleries in Berlin, Zurich and New York. His works are now included in prestigious public collections and museum foundations: a core of four paintings, including “Naviglio d’inverno” (circa 1940) and some still lifes such as “Fiori” (circa 1950), belong to the Art Collections of the Fondazione Cariplo of Milan, while canvases such as “Tramonto in Brughiera” are preserved at the Galleria Pitocchetto of Brescia, alongside a broad presence in important Italian and international private collections.

DESCRIPTION

“Scena di Mercato Russo,” oil on panel, 51x41 cm with frame, 40x30 cm the panel alone, signed at the bottom right, datable to the 1940s of the 20th century.

The painting conveys with extraordinary vitality a scene of daily life from the artist’s homeland, immersed in the icy atmosphere of a winter market. The canvas is populated by human figures captured in a dense and dynamic hustle and bustle, among which two women stand out in the foreground examining the goods on a stall: one with her back, wrapped in a green jacket and a richly red skirt, the other wearing a blue coat and a vibrant red headscarf. On the right is glimpsed the figure of a merchant under the snow-covered canopy of a shop, topped by a sign with red characters, while to the left other figures move, including a man bent in walking. In the background, Russian architecture reveals itself in the snow-covered roofs of izbas and in the characteristic onion dome of a church rising on the left, while bare trees and a bustling crowd blur into the horizon beneath a sky of troubled clouds and slivers of blue.

From a compositional point of view, the work unfolds in a close, dense frame that plunges the observer directly into the market’s ferment. Karpoff’s technique relies on a “first-hand” brushstroke, extraordinarily rapid, thick and rich in matter, capable of building forms without recourse to drawing but by pure juxtaposition of color touches. The chromatic play is based on the contrast between the cool, desaturated tones of the winter landscape — dominated by dirty whites, grays and the deep blue of the sky — and the sudden bright accents of warm color, such as vivid reds, greens and browns that light up the figures’ clothing and market stalls, capturing natural light and the biting cold with immediate impressionistic effect.

This work represents a perfect example of the so-called “landscapes of memory” by Karpoff, a thread the artist continued to cultivate with poignant nostalgia even during his long Milanese sojourn, decades after leaving Russia. In this canvas, the lyrical and melancholic Russian spirit blends happily with the lessons of naturalism and Lombard late impressionism learned at Brera. Karpoff’s intimate and emotional poetics manifests here not only in the faithful rendering of the troubled winter atmosphere, but above all in the warm human participation with which the artist depicts his people’s daily life, transforming a distant memory into a scene pulsating with life and visual poetry.

CONDITION REPORT

Good overall condition. Work intact in every part with vivid and legible chroma and brushwork. The frame is offered as a courtesy.

The photograph of the painting placed in an ambient setting is generated by artificial intelligence and should be considered purely as an example. Only the remaining photos, which faithfully show the object and its features, both in general and in detail, are authoritative.

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