Explication of the work in the collection of Belgazprombank:

"Nude" by Grigory Efimovich Glukman from the corporate collection of JSC "Belgazprombank" was painted in Paris, where the artist lived since 1924. The painting reflects one of the main themes developed by the master - the seductive female nudity of the classical model. This contains a kind of paradox of an émigré artist, found itself at the epicenter of avant-garde discoveries and remained alien to radical plastic innovations and shocks to the foundations of academic art.Although most of the masters of the Paris School never broke with figurativeness and lifelikeness, Gluckman in her context looks exceptionally classical and conservative.

It seems that the artist belongs to two eras. Living in the 20th century, he is inspired by the ideal images of the High Renaissance, proclaims his desire to preserve the traditions of the old masters, studies the techniques of German and Dutch artists of the 15th-16th centuries, and since the 1920s he has been painting almost exclusively on a wooden basis. This is probably why many of his works are a kind of reminiscences of textbook classics. In the creative heritage of Grigory Gluckman, one can see imitations in the spirit of the heroines of ancient myths from the paintings of Titian, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Ingres' odalisques and Degas's dancers. Eclecticism here is not a lack of unity of style, but a conscious quotation, a parade of associations. “This is a kind of mannered painting in which skill can exist on its own, regardless of casual interest in the subject,” wrote criticism in 1929 regarding the artist’s work.

In this context, Gluckmann's Nude is an elegant echo of The Great Bather or, as it is also called, Valpinson's Bather, by the French academic artist of the first half of the 19th century, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Grigory Glukman also portrays the model from the back, creating a sensual and chaste portrait of the female body. Neither the face nor the intimate seductive details of female nudity are visible. Only a rounded back, gentle sloping shoulders, a gentle turn of the head, a leaning left arm with a bent hand, all inscribed in the composition with virtuoso sensual delicacy.

The figure of a young woman is read as a solid golden-warm silhouette against a slightly conditional ocher-brown background. Color spots and transparent penumbra on dark skin create the impression of a soft haze, as if enveloping the figure. It seems that the artist “sculpts” the body of his delightful model not with a brush, but with wonderful light using the finest color transitions. The picturesque effects are achieved by the peculiarities of the technique: the use of a wooden board with a dense white gypsum base applied to it with the addition of marble chips. Carefully polished and forming a brilliant white surface, this gesso provided his painting with an extraordinary internal light saturation of the paint layer.

Gluckman managed to create in this image a special world of artistic sensibility, to combine straightforwardness and mystery, ultimate tangibility and eloquent reticence, softness of features, purity and innocence with hidden eroticism, the poetry of seductive female flesh.

There is indeed a peculiar poetics of duality in this work. It naturally coexists whimsical fashion of those days (a short Charleston haircut, popular among urban women) and a strict antiquity tradition, the image of a girl of the 1920s and classical ideality. The same can be said about the formal decision of the canvas. The semi-abstract plastic construction of the background, dryish graphic folds of fabrics emphasize the modernity of the work, its connection with the artistic ideas of the 20th century. While the smooth, transparent, without traces of a stroke, body painting, the smooth outlines of the figure refer to the masterpieces of the Renaissance and classic eras.

There is a special charm in this bifurcation of the image, a kind of refined and thoughtful artistic eclecticism of Gluckman. The picture combined almost everything that the artist was looking for and followed in art: high eroticism and the theme of eternal femininity, memories of the classics and modern imagery, traditional techniques and the impeccable triumph of drawing.

"Nude" by Grigory Glukman is also a rather rare example of a work in the nude genre for Belarusian art collections, which dates back to the first half of the 20th century. Methodically eliminated in Soviet puritan art from the creative practice of artists, the image of a naked female body was widely developed in the art of émigré artists, who comprehended and freely processed the experience of painting by the great European masters.

Acquired at a Christie's auction in London in 2012."