Kira Morpha-Sargon, 2017, Water Chess, with a steep black-and-white board, elongated liquid pieces and droplets above a red-and-white rose and splashing vessels

Water Chess — rose, water, cup, and chessboard symbolic still life detail

Water Chess — silver reflection and magical realist object detail

Master

Water Chess

Name: Water Chess
Brand: Paint For Heart
Price: 6509.0 SGD
Availability: InStock

Artist Kira Sargon

Creation Date 2017

Material Oil on canvas

Size 42 x 62 cm

Category original

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Current total $6,509.00

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Perspectives

A closer look

Artwork Notes

Art appreciation

The chessboard narrows as it rises through the middle of the composition, its alternating squares setting out an emphatic perspective. Pieces of different heights stand across it, with bent stems and tops shaped like spheres, forks or shallow dishes. Dark bases spill beyond the board into irregular drips. Below, the large rose interrupts the geometry, while vessels and arcs of water on either side return the eye to the foreground. The clearest structural tension lies between the strict grid and these soft, unstable objects.

Blue, white and grey describe slanting beams, glass-like structures and floating droplets above the board; pale pink and cool grey take over below. Red is concentrated within the folded rose and becomes the painting’s strongest warm accent. Morpha-Sargon defines pieces, petals and containers with precise outlines, then weakens their stability through reflections, blurred transitions and liquid edges. Exact description gives the invented space a persuasive material presence.

Morpha-Sargon studied art and architecture in Russia and later trained in classical painting and restoration in Florence and Venice. Her command of drawing allows an impossible scene to be rendered with physical clarity. Her continuing interest in magical realism and symbolism also helps explain why the chessboard, rose and water have left their expected settings. The painting supplies no fixed allegorical key. Its meanings develop through the encounter between the order of a game, changing liquid forms and the living structure of a flower.

Theme

Style and context

Surrealism and magical realism often preserve the recognisable appearance of ordinary objects while altering their scale, gravity or spatial relations. Recognisable vessels, a rose and a chessboard remain precisely painted, while liquid pieces and impossible spatial relations unsettle their familiar rules. In Water Chess, the grid proposes order, while suspended droplets, dissolving pieces and the enlarged rose open several possible associations.

The work also draws on the tradition of symbolic still life. Games, flowers and water vessels have carried ideas of time, life and thought in European painting, but the grid, liquid, rose and vessels keep the symbolic relationship open. Hard squares sit beside folded petals, liquid edges enter a black-and-white system, and the cool upper field is held against the pink below. Those concrete relations sustain the painting’s open symbolism.

Artist Profile

About the artist

Kira Morpha-Sargon was born in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1967. She is a professional oil painter whose work moves between magical realism and symbolism. She is a member of the Russian Professional Artists Union, the Russian Artists Association, and the American Colorado Art Association.

She graduated from the Ural State University of Architecture and Art, then continued her studies at a painting school in Florence, Italy. She later trained in classical painting and restoration techniques at a workshop school affiliated with Santa Maria Cathedral in Venice.

Her subjects include symbolic portraiture, historical narrative, surreal landscapes, and conceptual painting. Her oil technique combines refined execution with rich colour layering, linking Russian realist training with European classical painting traditions. She has held more than thirty solo exhibitions across Russia, Europe, and Asia, and received a silver medal in the Fine Portrait category from the Colorado Art Association.

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