Bread

Description

Author: Lizogub, Maria. 1909-1998
A multi-figure genre composition in a vertical format, depicting a domestic household scene. In the foreground, a young woman in a lilac dress and yellow headscarf sits on the floor kneading dough; her gaze is directed upward toward another woman, linking the figures in a unified action. Between them sits a young girl in a red sweater, while to the right stands a full-length figure of a woman in a blue dress carrying bread on her outstretched arms. Executed in oil in a free painterly manner using broad, generalized brushwork, the forms are rendered with flat modeling. The color scheme is light, built on a combination of delicate tones against a high-key background, imparting a decorative and lyrical quality to the scene. The motif of bread-making is transformed into a poetic representation of everyday women’s labor and traditional domestic life.