Church [Souzdal, Bogorodsky women monastery]. Oil on canvas, [1913-1915], signed in Cyrillic low right, also inscribed Lentulov, Souzdal, N111, 350 R[oubles] on the back; has stamp “Kamerny Theater, Inventory number 1371” on the backing cardboard, 13 ¾ x 17 ¾ inches Provenance: Alisa Koonen; Moscow Kamerny Theater;  Exhibited: Jack of Diamond 1916 exhibition ( #111 of the catalog – under the title:” Church”). [“…Grounding principle of Lentulov’s works in 1913-1915 that he formulated himself – “Color-Dynamics”. Architectural landscapes, portraits and still lives are pierced with active movement of colors. Their forms are divided into light, kind of running color clouts or spots, and besides this dynamics was evenly propagated over the canvas with alternation of pictorial rhythm condensations and depressions, or concentrated pictorial forms at the center, from where waves of motion were diverging to the canvas edges…

Curvature and distortions of his forms are coming already not from a cubistic canon, but from a real curvature of churches and cells, built as if of haphazardly and criss-cross placed, motley painted light paper. Lentulov’s brush deals with a gay disorder of tabernacles and roofs with a natural passion, adding there a real “color festivity” as well. The last one – not only from violet dashes, cast away by heads into roofs, but also from exaggerating the natural colors of the subject: just to mention relation of the sky blue with green and pink colored decoration or shining atop an orange paper lantern of the onion-head…”(G. Pospelov, The Knave of Diamonds, Moscow, Sovetskij Hudozhnik, 1990, p. 157, 168) Exhibited: “Faces of Russia”, February 2007, West Palm Beach International Art Fair, USA (illustrated on page 28 of the catalog). Bibliography: “A Time to Gather… RUSSIANART From Foreign Private collections”, State Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg, Palace Editions,2008, illustrated on p.20.

In original Venetian Sansovino hand-carved polychrome and parcel gilt baroque-style frame XVI-XVII century with eight cornered and centered cherubs heads on the plain frieze between leaf sight and back moldings with  brocaded mat  It retains its original hanging holes pierced through from the back of the frame to the top edge, through which a leather cord has been strung – a common way to hang paintings in XVI century)