The artist is Drevin
The events of the First World War led to the emergence of a massive wave of refugees. Among the refugees from Latvia was Alexander Drevin, who arrived in Moscow in the spring of 1915. He quickly joined the metropolitan life, joined the Association “Diamond Valet”, participated in charitable exhibitions. Shocked by the grief and sufferings that the war brought down on people, the artist understood how powerful power could and should become art, how many feelings and impressions that are indescribable in words can be realized.
In 1915-1917, Drevin created a series of paintings “Refugees”. The images of women in the painting “dinner” are deprived of any field detail, brought to the laconic expressiveness of the sign. The figures and features of their faces are extremely simplified, close to geometrism. As if with the loss of the Fatherland, women lost their individuality, forgot their name. Empty dishes standing on the table recalls the hunger and deprivations of the First World War period. The state of loss and hopelessness is emphasized by the asceticism of the color -cooked (cinnamon, hoarse, cold blue), conveying a person’s feelings with ragged roots, restless, lonely – for whom the multicolor of the sunny world has disappeared and the universe plunged into the dusk.