Evening in Ukraine

Art historian Vladimir Petrov wrote in his article dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arkhip Kuindzhi:^[2]

Alien to "playfulness", he thickens and generalizes tones, intensifies the "luminosity" of his works, using coloristic and technological innovations in the name of "connecting" the viewer to the real life of light. Such aspirations of Kuindzhi were very clearly embodied in the painting Evening in the Ukraine (1878, partially rewritten in 1901, GRM), in which the artist depicted white huts and cherry orchards on the slope of a picturesque hill brightly illuminated by the crimson light of sunset.

In an article on the work of Arkhip Kuindzhi, art historian Vitaly Manin noted:^[3]

Evening in the Ukraine is almost the most indicative of Kuindzhi's creative method. Color gives the image an enchanted immobility, extraordinary peace - as if unearthly. Kuindzhi's decorativism manifested itself here nakedly. To accentuate the effect of bright illumination and exhausted freezing of the airy atmosphere, the artist discarded detailing, which in the method of Shishkin, the opposite of Kuindzhi's method, would have been the key to revealing the essence of the theme. The clumps of trees are generalized into heavy masses. The color is so condensed that it appears to be a darkish draughty mass.

• Ukrainian Night (1876)