Cornflowers (painting)

Cornflowers is a painting by the Russian artist Sergei Ivanovich Osipov (1915–1985), executed in 1976 and related to his most famous works in the genre of still life.
History.
Still life "Cornflowers" is a laconic composition of the three items easily located on the surface of a table. This allowed the artist to effectively determine their shape, texture and color properties. In this work, Osipov certainly reaches a new quality of his painting. Polished surface of the table from which the artist took off the cloth, discovers interesting new features, giving the composition of the picture more depth. The traditional for the Osipov art theme of «spiritual sources» disclosed in painting with a special grace and taste. One of the first in the Russian Soviet Painting of 1960-1980 Sergei Osipov was able to raise a great theme in the genre of still life and make it close and understandable to every viewer. In this picture fully revealed high artistic culture that distinguishes his work, and that, in the words of Nikolai Punin can be called as the «Leningrad sensation of painting... with a kind of deeply honest, clean person deep relationship to the means of expression».
For the first time the painting was exhibited in 1980 year in Leningrad at the largest Regional Art Show in the Manezh City Exhibition Hall. Then in 1983 still-life has been shown in Moscow at the Osipov one man exhibition and reproduced in the exhibition catalog. The article wrote the leningrad art critics Alexander Lyakhovitsky and Svetlana Makhlina. After Osipov death the painting was shown on his solo exhibition in 1991 at the Exhibition Halls of the Leningrad Union of Artists.
In 1997 the painting was exhibited at "Still-life painting of 1940-1990s – The Leningrad School" art show in Saint Petersburg in the Nikolai Nekrasov Memorial Museum. The painting was reproduced and described in the Art Show official catalog and poster. In 2007 the «Cornflowers» was reproduced and described among 350 art works by Leningrad artists in the book «Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School», published in Russian and English. In 2011 the painting «Cornflowers» was described in article devoted to the 20th Anniversary of Sergei Osipov one man exhibition of 1991, printed in St. Petersburg art history notebooks.