Ivan Karpoff (novocherkassk, 1898 – Milan, 1970), Sunset In Dacia

Ivan Karpoff (Novocherkassk, 1898 – Milan, 1970)

Sunset in Dacia

Oil on panel, 90 x 120 cm

Signed lower left: Karpoff

Ivan Karpoff was an artist of Russian origin who, from childhood, showed a strong inclination toward the graphic arts. Trained in his homeland, he moved to Milan in 1925 thanks to a scholarship that allowed him to graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under Ambrogio Alciati (1878–1929), a skilled portraitist who drew inspiration from the Scapigliati painter Tranquillo Cremona (1837–1878). Unlike his teacher, Karpoff focused less on portraits and more on painting wooded, mountainous, and seascape landscapes, often captured during heavy snowfalls and at sunset. Karpoff can be considered, in every respect, an Italian artist, specifically a Lombard one. His painting, in fact, which frequently depicts views of the Milanese countryside, draws on the influences of Lombard painters such as Eugenio Gignous (1850–1906) and Leonardo Bazzaro (1853–1937). His paintings, therefore, are characterized by impressionistic brushstrokes in the nineteenth-century style, but they also stand out for his great skill in rendering reflections and the play of light. Karpoff’s paintings are imbued with nostalgia for his homeland, Russia, which manifests not only in his pictorial treatment but also in that sense of solitude and suspension that hovers over the snow-covered plains he depicted during the winter season, evoking Slavic romanticism. The painting under consideration here embodies all these characteristics. The snow-covered landscape, depicted at sunset, is that of the Hungarian countryside, another setting that frequently appears in Karpoff’s repertoire. The work stands out for the beauty of its rendering of the rosy and silvery reflections of the snow cover that blankets and immobilizes the vegetation, by the intensity of the almost petrol-green hue that characterizes the body of water at the center of the canvas, and by the swift brushstrokes with which Karpoff renders the trees, the small wooden cabin, the human figure, and the horse. Despite the presence of living beings, there is no lack of that aforementioned sense of suspension and solitude, which is in fact fueled precisely by the snow cover that immobilizes nature. There are numerous works depicting snowy landscapes by Karpoff on the antique market, but the collection also includes *Naviglio d’Inverno*, owned by the Fondazione Cariplo.