Spirits

A dusky sky, tinged with twilight hues, descends upon a group of three figures huddled together. The skeletal, outstretched hand and the cloak of the figure on the left might evoke Death as personified by filmmaker Ingmar Bergman in The Seventh Seal (1957). The two men, whose faces are hidden from view, stand on either side of a woman with grayish-bluish skin, whose face becomes the focal point of the painting. The sole counterpoint to this somber trio, in the background of the composition, is an architectural fragment of an ancient-style building that, too, is on the verge of disappearing. Everything in Spirits points to Sanya Kantarovsky’s preoccupation with the transitional state in which the spirits find themselves—perhaps trapped.