This piece is a visual meditation on the elegance and psychological depth of chess, drawing direct inspiration from The Soviet School of Chess and the meticulous logic embedded in Vladimir Nabokov’s compositions. Hand-drawn and textured to evoke a vintage Soviet-era aesthetic, the work layers game analysis with artistic abstraction. The upper diagram reflects Nabokov’s own chess problem, annotated in classic notation, while the lower grid distills the essence of strategy into a minimalist “mate in two” puzzle.

By juxtaposing analytical structure with intuitive mark-making, this design explores the duality of chess as both art and science. It is a quiet homage to the intellectual rigor and creative expression cultivated under the Soviet chess tradition, where the board was not just a battleground, but a canvas.