The Hermit

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The National Art Museum, Riga (Latvia).

Briefly about the painting:

One of the few paintings by the Latvian artist, where he almost did not use the technique of pointillism and resorted to minimalism in detail. In addition to the character and conditionally stony and desert landscape, there is nothing in the plot. All the viewer’s attention is drawn to a naked young man sitting on a bare stone. The philosophical orientation of the author’s intention is explained by the title of the work. The artist considered the image to be an internal self-portrait when he was forced to “pull his head into the shoulders”, since his art did not correspond to the concepts of social realism. It is not by chance that the author attentive to details placed a watch without arrows on the character’s wrist. The reproduction of this painting is used on the cover of a monographic album with 200 reproductions, released by the Riga publishing house Neputns on the 100th anniversary of the artist.