Night in Antibes (2025)Oil painting by Nikifor Swiristuhin

I painted this night in Antibes when the city stopped being a postcard and became a feeling. The sky is dense and heavy, saturated with blue and violet, as if the darkness itself were slowly breathing above the rooftops. I deliberately left the brushstrokes rough and visible — accuracy of form mattered less to me than the pulse of the street, its inner tension.

The buildings on both sides seem to lean toward each other, tightening the space the way an old southern town does after sunset. Their walls glow with reflected light from shop windows and street lamps — green, ochre, pink. I didn’t straighten the perspective: night is never even or stable; it sways and vibrates.

At the center is a crossroads — traffic signs, crosswalk stripes, fragments of movement. The cars have almost dissolved, yet traces of their presence remain in flashes of red and white paint. This is not a specific moment, but a memory of motion, of noise that has just faded.

I painted quickly, instinctively, almost by touch, letting the paint lead me. For me, this work is not simply a night in Antibes, but a state of being: the solitude of a painter in a city that never fully sleeps, and a quiet dialogue with the street when it finally stops speaking out loud.

Materials used:

Oil paints.

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 40 x 40 x 3cm (unframed) / 40 x 40cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Impressionistic
• Subject: Architecture and cityscapes

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