The effect of the sunset. Arhip Kuindzhi (Kuindschi) (1842-1910)

Description of Arkhip Kuindzhi’s painting The Sunset Effect

When the color in the painting turns to light, it is with great confidence that you can say that the canvas in front of you belongs to the brush of Arkhip Quindzhi.

It would seem to be a canvas, oil paints, and suddenly there is a real glow from somewhere, as if there is some invisible lamp under the canvas. It seems that the light became the main character of the artist’s paintings. In his work Sunset Effect, the light is red.

At first its glare seems unreal, but if you remember what sunsets are like in reality, none of them are like any other, and sometimes they paint objects in the most bizarre colors. Here the snow, the rocks, and the pines are colored. Apparently, this sunset is in the mountains, and there, because some of the rays are hidden behind the peaks, the palette becomes generally rich and completely uncommon.

Transitions from one color to another are much sharper, more radical. This is why the canvas is called "Sunset Effect". In the mountains, those are the effects. And they can change literally every minute, becoming rich food for the imagination of any creative person.

So here, in the immortalized mountain landscape, it seems that a minute or two will pass, and the red rays of the setting sun will disappear, giving way to another unique effect. In the valleys, as their inhabitants say, the sunset is quick. And only the hand of a true artist gives us the opportunity to enjoy this moment for as long as we want.

The snow-covered hollow goes somewhere in the distance and descends to another site, where everything looks different. But we can only guess, looking at the blue-purple sky in the background. Yes, at first the light seems unreal, but the longer you gaze into the picture, the more you want to get into this mountain world and touch the rocks, on which the red sun rays are frozen.