South Night (Black Tree) 1991.
This work was done in the studio during the same season, in winter, based on the motifs of the same trip in 1991. The artist would use the sketches from his sketchbook, and he would have enough sketches to work with throughout the whole winter. There are only several months apart this painting and the creation of “White Tree”. Thus, “Black tree” was finished by 1992.
On the boarding house premises somewhere in the heart of the garden I found a tree, a poplar, the bottom of which was well-defined by a flashlight. I found it very interesting, and I came back to the room to tell Yuriy Nikolayevich about my finding. Of course, he wanted to see that for himself right away, so we hit the road to that tree for him to do the sketch of it.
That was a sketch of a painting which later became well-known as “South Night”. Personally I would more often call it “Black Tree” in analogy to “White Tree”, which was painted 10 years prior to this one.
The painting was taken to a private collection somewhere in England. It was unbearably difficult to give it away, but Yuriy Nikolayevich never was able to resist the true connoisseurs who could see the same as he did.
