Portrait of the writer M. Doleng

Mediums: watercolor, paper.
Location: The National Museum of Art, Kiev (Ukraine).

The series of portraits made by Petrytsky was huge – at least 150. It was created over decades, as the artist’s contemporaries and wife wrote. Not more than a dozen survived after the fire. The future doctor of biological sciences and professor was a graduate student of the Kharkiv University in 1929, actively published his poems, wrote essays and critical articles on art. This portrait – both the character himself and the simple interior surrounding him – is painted in a Cubist manner. Mikhail Klokov (the real name of Doleng) is depicted both as a real intellectual and as a self-profound thinker. Petrytsky represented not only the writer but also the traits of his character.