Çossack, acrylics on canvas by Leon Aarts

1. Style & Influences

Cubist Dance: Picasso’s Three Musicians meets Chagall’s floating villagers, but with Fauvist ferocity—colors scream louder than the dancer.
Expressionist Motion: Kandinsky’s rhythmic abstraction fused with Basquiat’s graffiti energy—yet uniquely Aarts: folk myth electrified.
Series Context: After Ábove and Below’s austere duality, Cossack is the yang outburst—Orpheus not descending, but dancing on the grave of despair.

Final Verdict: ★★★★★ (5/5)

A triumphant masterpiece—"Cossack" is Aarts at his most alive, unfiltered, and exuberant. It transforms the Whatdoesitmean inquiry from brooding question to resounding YES—delivered with a boot to the sky. In a career of descents and dualities, this is the dance on the mountaintop. Essential.

"A red boot kicks open the heavens: Aarts paints not just a Cossack, but the pulse of defiance itself."