Philipp Andreevich Maliavin (1869-1940) was a Russian painter and draftsman. Trained in icon-painting as well as having studied under the great Russian realist painter Ilya Repin, Maliavin is unusual among the Russian artists of the time for having a peasant background. It is possibly due to this that his paintings often depict peasant life, and his most famous works show peasant women dancing.
Born into a large peasant family, Philip Maliavin`s experience of village life would define his work throughout his career. Painted in bright, expressive colors, Maliavin`s Laughing Village Baba is a fine example of the artist`s Russian period and one of the notable paintings in his famous series of portraits of Russian peasant women. The present painting shows a charming image of a peasant woman, filling the canvas to the edges, pausing in the midst of a dance, contemplating the next move or the world around her. The colors of her dress gain a brightness and vibrancy increasing upwards to her vibrant floral shawl. The composition is dynamic, the pose of the Baba and her sarafan carried in the dance giving the impression of movement. Famous artist Vladimir Makovsky described Maliavin`s baba, whose sarafan is like a red calico fire and whose sharp, blackish-blue shadow on her forehead, almost improbable shadow - one has to get used to it.
Following his departure from Russia in 1922, Maliavin continued to work abroad, but the influence of those unrestrained whirlwind-like dances, movement and laughter never lost their hold on his artistic imagination.