Chupiatov looks down on his world
It’s possible there was something inside of Leonid Terentievich Chupiatov that wanted to get loose. He was fond of skewed perspectives, particularly from above, as is dramatically evident in “The Staircase” from the mid-1920s.
Chupiatov (1890-1941) was a student at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists and later of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, who honed him on still-lifes that ended up “as seen from above”. When he moved on to theatrical set design, you could see landscapes through the windows as if from a height.
