Autumn Yellow (Happy)
1912
- Period Late 19th century – Early 20th century
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In 1912, in parallel to his work on his Rayonist compositions, Mikhail Larionov painted several pictures in the spirit of «Infantile Primitivism». Among them and affiliated to the Seasons cycle is the canvas «Ha[p]py Autumn». The artist was captivated by children’s drawings and collected them over the entire course of his lifetime. A spontaneous naivety, borrowed by the artist from these same drawings, is reflected here in the expressive «simplicity» of the colour and the «clumsy» ungrammatical inscriptions. At the same time, the natural drawing of the lips, earrings and letters anticipates Larionov’s later work on Futurist books, where he achieved a similar union of word and image. Russian Museum: From Icons to the Modern Times. Palace Editions, St Petersburg, 2015. P. 301.