Konik
Little horse
- Material
- canvas
- Location
- private collection
- Related works
-
- Konik, 1990 · bronze Open the catalogue entry → The knight in bronze: the chess piece that in the painting stands on the chequerboard.
- Konik, 1990 · marble bronze Open the catalogue entry → The same horse’s head carried to twice the height, on a marble column.
The work
A floor of black and gold chequers, rising on the left like a wall; above it a great ochre and red mass filling half the canvas; at the top a red drape in heavy folds, and between them a strip of sky. On the mass, painted with the precision of a natural history plate, a sea horse stands upright, its curled tail coming down to touch the chequerboard.
In Polish «konik» is at once the little horse, the knight in chess and — in «konik morski» — the sea horse. The painting paints the third and sets it exactly where the second would stand. And the chess piece is a sculpture of her own: the bronze horse with the collar of links and its version twice as tall, on a marble column. It is the chequerboard that makes the difference between a pun and a quotation.