Schooled in traditional realism, Alexey von Schlippe experimented with modifications of cubism and expressionism, then eventually looked back to early Renaissance painters such as Piero della Francesca, and Giotto, and finally toward the masters of the Eastern Orthodox icon. In the early frescoes, altarpieces, and particularly in the icons, he observed a monumental simplicity of form which was later to emerge in his own painting. He also observed their highly explicit use of figures and objects as religious symbols, a method which he himself applies in a very different way.
The medieval influence can be seen especially in the partially flattened, relatively shadowless faces of his figures, in their uniform, stylized postures, and in the overall reduction of voluminous space to a more two dimensional area. There is in von Schlippe’s paintings, as in the medieval tradition, little illusion of perspective, no focal point, and almost no portrayal of action. Rather each is a calm, comparatively immobile surface, the contents of which may be seen both as objects and figures, on the one hand, and, on the other, as symbols and idols, pointing toward an undisclosed presence beyond the
immediate visible world.
Though medieval-like in manner and method, Alexey von Schlippe remains a modern in the sense of interminability pervading the majority of his pictures. The fixed theological vision of the Middle Ages gives way, in his paintings, to an absence of any strict metaphysical or mythological structure, and the stable medieval cosmos gives way to a suggestion of the fluctuating, expanding universe in which we find ourselves today. Finally, the ancient set convictions as to our position, role, and destiny give way to a subtle interrogation of our very substance.