Pasiphae

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City (the USA).

Briefly about the painting:

In the first half of the 1940s, while living in the USA, the artist created dozens of canvases on the themes of ancient mythology. The master often created paintings using the plot about the daughter of Helios and the wife of the Cretan king Minos Pasiphae, who became the mother of not only Ariadne and Fedra, but also of the Minotaur. In the first canvas of 1942, he used the techniques of Abstract Expressionism, while the entire recognizable series of paintings is distinguished by a dark background and fine drawing of individual and numerous details. The queen’s unnatural passion for the beautiful white bull, imposed on her by Poseidon, is expressed emotionally.