Lanzheron
Ochre yellows and blue-gray waters, stark purple shadows and surreal orange flesh illustrate the mood of Ladyzhensky’s memories of the port and beach in Odessa. Seen as if from above, the divisions between sand and water, or water and stone, become rigid, geometric compositions. The figures painted here show the full range of activity on Ladyzhensky’s beaches. Some relax in the sun, while others are hard at work. In Spring at Otrada Beach, the men are hard at work painting reddish boats blue. In The Guys Are Painting Well, three men are leisurely painting pictures, rather than boats.
Yefim Ladyzhensky
On the Shore at Prokudin’s Dacha
Date unknown
Collection of David and Kathryn Birnbaum
Ladyzhensky recalls how Belka, his childhood dog, pictured in the lower right-hand corner, lay down beside him, and they each “entered a deep slumber. The great light that God created on the fourth day after many a thousand years turned my body into a dry parchment, which could have become a good find for archaeologists. When I attempted to bend a joint, it sounded like dry parchment too. Only the sea, created by God on the third day, could return the previous elasticity to my skin.”
Yefim Ladyzhensky
The Guys are Painting Well
Date unknown
Collection of David and Kathryn Birnbaum
Referring to the painters Ivan Aivazovsky and Albert Marquet, Ladyzhensky says, “I have seen the frozen sea, welded to the shores of Lanzheron. I have seen you, Oh Sea, stormy as on Aivazovsky’s paintings. I have seen You without ripple, peaceful as in the paintings by the artist Marquet. I have seen You frozen like steel in a furnace…”
Yefim Ladyzhensky
Spring at Otrada Beach
1974
Collection of the artist’s family
Ladyzhensky recounts that “Lanzheron was defined as the entire seaside and the sea up to Prokudin’s former dacha, where on the narrow rocky shore a water station for Soviet workers was situated, which had formerly been the dacha ‘Otrada’, with several white fishers’ huts…The fishermen’s scows after a night’s work of catching mackerel and bullheads lay resting on the shore.”
