By Luciano Migliaccio
Two Horseman was painted by Larionov probably at the beginning of his service in the Russian army in October 1910. In 1913, it was possibly sent to the first Fall Exhibition in Berlin, organized by Herwarth Walden, outstanding figure of the German vanguard, editor of the famous art magazine Der Sturm, who was the first owner of the picture. The painting documents a moment during the career of Larionov in which the artist’s work approaches that of the German vanguard movement, Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Horseman”), in which the Russian Wassily Kandinski was an outstanding figure. As noted by the German painter Franz Marc in a letter to Kandinsky, quoting another work of the same period, La Salve, (“The Volley of Gunfires”) Larionov revisits provocatively the childish imagery. A horseman in a similar posture is represented by the painter in a picture of 1912, in the Tate Gallery in London, inspired by a Russian popular engraving depicting the hero Lazar Lazarevich (Parton 1993, p. 83).

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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