Italy

Isaak Brodsky painted Italy on Capri in 1911. Academic support enabled European travel, and meeting Maxim Gorky brought him to the island. His wife and other relatives posed as Italians. The busy southern market consequently became an unusual family image assembled from travel impressions.

Jewellery, shells and strings of beads fill the foreground. Brodsky distinguishes small shapes and varied lustres. His teacher Repin organised compositions with numerous figures and objects; that experience serves the market’s abundance here. Our attention can move among individual things for a long time without exhausting the foreground.

Fruit forms dense rows of yellow, green and red patches, associating the goods with a fertile South. Yet the abundance is carefully organised. Italy appears through a visitor drawn to colour, craft and material richness. This image of a country is sustained by the objects selected for display.

A woman and child appear on the right above a laden animal. Brodsky’s wife confirmed the family’s involvement, though her account does not securely identify every figure. Familiar faces help populate the constructed scene. Actual travel and posing before the easel combine in one densely convincing image.

Baskets beside the animal introduce transport and trade. Behind the decorative pleasure lies a market’s practical organisation: goods must arrive, be arranged and offered for sale. Brodsky packs objects so closely that little empty space remains between figures. Human activity and material abundance become inseparable parts of the scene.

Mountains and pale houses rise above the stalls. The distance gives relief from the crowded foreground and establishes the surrounding terrain. Thin paint and subdued hues unify the picture. Brodsky worked on it for a long time and recalled considerable frustration with unsuccessful passages. Its apparent abundance required persistent compositional effort.

In 1911 new movements were radically changing pictorial form. Brodsky continued developing detailed representation and drawing on earlier traditions. Italy demonstrates the variety of artistic responses possible at the same moment. A contemporary of the avant-garde chose a different path, combining travel, family posing and academic skill in a dense vision of southern life.