The stamp “Return from the Fair” from the series “100th Anniversary of P. P. Konchalovsky” was issued on April 6, 1976. Print run: 7,400,000 copies. Artist: I. Martynov.
In the summer of 1926, P. P. Konchalovsky lived in a fisherman’s hut on Lake Ilmen. Life among ordinary people and the study of their everyday ways helped the artist choose his subject. He decided to capture simple scenes from folk life. Thus the painting “Return from the Fair” was born. Two men and a young woman in peasant clothing returning from the fair are not merely a genre scene: the artist caught epic features, sensed the strength and wholeness of these people. In this work, as in the entire Novgorod cycle, the search for monumentality and a pantheistic sense of life is clearly reflected, when nature—its breadth and boundlessness—makes it possible to emphasize the essence of people, their beauty, and their optimism as phenomena of a divine order.
Konchalovsky: In “Return from the Fair” I intended to saturate everything with movement: the sky with running clouds, the smooth surface of the lake cut by sailboats, the galloping horses, and the motion of the cart. I so wanted to convey the dynamics truthfully that I myself ran alongside the racing cart to catch how the horses’ legs are positioned while running. I even made a special study for the shafts, to grasp their line more accurately, even though I have a good visual memory. The subject was so captivating that here too I could not restrain myself and, as in “The Novgorodians,” made mistakes. I chased, for example, the depiction of dust at the wheels, and that is completely unnecessary naturalism: I simply needed to take the wheels in the very essence of their motion so that the viewer would see that they are throwing up dust. In real painting, as in any art, there must always be something left unsaid; there must be work for the viewer’s eye and mind, otherwise it will be boring, it will turn into a report rather than a work of art. But I forgot all this while working. I also got carried away too much with the faces, and with the cart, and with the harness. And in the end it did not come out the way I wanted; I strayed completely from the fresco-like style. People reproach me for a lack of subject matter, yet it turns out that it is also bad when the subject matter bears down too heavily and overwhelms the painter. One has to maintain some kind of devilish balance within oneself in order to make real painting.