Filipp Maliavin
Dancing
Peasant Woman
circa
1913
With a single swish of this woman's dress
a story materialises across the folds and creases of its fabric. We fall into
these as if engrossed by the painted pages of a rich tale; yet in this
particular narrative we learn of everything but luxury and extravagance - at
least in the material sense. Stronger than the colours themselves is a
proclamation of raison d'étre. However
burdened this woman may be by the requirements of her unsophisticated and
'lowly' vocation she refuses to let it degrade her; she lives through the
little that she has and she proudly bears the crude beauty of the land she cultivates
day after day. Her mysterious moves are like the words of another language, but
through these rhythmic steps she traces for us an outline of the world with
which she is most familiar. Her skirts, billowing with vulumptuous breaths of
earthly air, echo the lumps and bumps of untouched terrain, blotched with spots
of petals and leaves and of uncombed blades of grass; her land, her métier, is her very skin and clothes. Only
when we see the pinched waist, the deeply-shadowed face and the flexed hand are
we gently reminded of the human being that inhabits this painting. She teases
us with her silent laughter; she gestures defiance in playing 'leader' (should
we not follow her trailing skirts to wherever they may lead?) and she grips us
with a hurricane of underappreciated wonders. Now comes the time to question whether her story really is as poor as it is real...
