Ivan Karpoff (Novocerkassk, 1898 - Milan, 1970) Sunset in Dacia Oil on panel, 90 x 120 cm Signed lower left: Karpoff Ivan Karpoff is an artist of Russian origin who showed a strong inclination towards graphic arts from an early age. Trained in his motherland, he moved to Milan in 1925 thanks to a scholarship that allowed him to graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts, where he attended the courses of Ambrogio Alciati (1878-1929), a skilled portraitist who drew inspiration from the painting of the Scapigliatura artist Tranquillo Cremona (1837-1878). Unlike his teacher, Karpoff focused more on painting woodland, mountain, and marine landscapes, often captured during heavy snowfall and at sunset. Karpoff can be considered an Italian, specifically Lombard, artist in all respects. His painting, in fact, which includes views of the Milanese countryside, draws on influences from Lombard painters such as Eugenio Gignous (1850-1906) and Leonardo Bazzaro (1853-1937). His paintings are characterized by impressionistic brushstrokes with a nineteenth-century taste, but also stand out for their great ability to handle reflections and plays of light. Nostalgia for the motherland, Russia, is also present in Karpoff's painting, which manifests itself not only in the pictorial treatment, but also in that sense of solitude and suspension that hangs over the plains he investigated during the winter season covered with snow, which thus bring to mind Slavic romanticism. The painting under examination here embodies all these characteristics. The snowy landscape, captured at sunset, is that of the Hungarian countryside, another place that often appears in Karpoff's repertoire. The work stands out for the beauty of the rendering of the pink and silver reflections of the blanket of snow that covers and immobilizes the vegetation, the intensity of the almost petrol-green color that characterizes the body of water in the center of the canvas, and the rapid touch of the brushstrokes with which Karpoff creates the trees, the small wooden hut, the human figure, and the horse. Despite the presence of living beings, that sense of suspension and solitude mentioned above is not lacking, but rather it is fueled precisely by the blanket of snow that immobilizes nature.