Grigory Ivanovich Gurkin (Choros-Gurke)
A Nomad Encampment in the Mountains
1900
oil on canvas
70.2 x 98 cm
State Art Museum of Altayskiy Region

Gurkin painted A Nomad Encampment in the Mountains on one of his trips to the Southern Altai, near Lake Kok-Kel, when the painter spent time in the yurt (tent) of a rich Kazakh nomad. His everyday impressions shaped the composition of the canvas, whose philosophical and symbolic contents are clearly in evidence. At the centre of the composition is a spherical felt yurt, the centre of a nomad’s world, characterized by a hierarchy between land and sky, the spirits of light and darkness, and worship of sacred mountains and animals. The precise academic technique used by the painter, and his interpretation of pictorial space, which is faithful to the tradition of plein air painting, and allows a meeting between man and the world around him, is consistent with the Russian ideas of the cosmic, as it affects their harmonious co-existence. The artist expressed similar ideas in his literary works, and indicated that they were close to Altai religious beliefs: “You feel the course of life and know that the spirit of the universe is alive in it, as it has since the creation.”