Study of Putti

Painted in 2017, the year the artist completed her MA at the City & Guilds of London Art School, Study of Putti reveals Flora Yukhnovich’s sumptuous vision. Out of a froth of sugary colours emerges the faintest hints of the titular putti who cavorts across the cloud-like daubs. Inspired by artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher, Yukhnovich reimagines Rococo motifs through a contemporary lens. Indeed, while abstract in appearance, Study of Putti cites Fragonard’s The Swarm of Cupids, conjuring images of eighteenth-century canvases, gilded chateaux and the hedonistic parties of the French court. For Yukhnovich, ‘there isn’t any time in art history that gets into the presence of paint like Rococo’, a period which she understands to have been ‘very indulgent’ (F. Yukhnovich interviewed by H. Black, ‘Flora Yukhnovich Brings Venetian History to Life’, Elephant, 31 March 2020). It is a sense her paintings invoke with their tactile layers of evocative colour. By shifting between figuration and abstraction, Yukhnovich’s canvases revel in their materiality and chromatic decadence. As the artist has noted, ‘I always feel very rewarded when a work sparks off lots of different associations, which encourage me to considers all the hows and whys of it all. I like it when people view my paintings and see things that I did not put in there!’ (F. Yukhnovich, ibid.).