Powercoin’s Micropuzzle Treasures returns with a vibrant work by Belarusian modern impressionist painter, Leonid Afremov

Back with a second release this year, although this is a 2022 dated coin, Powercoin’s much admired ‘Micropuzzle Treasures’ ditches the usual classics for a modern impressionist painter. Leonid Afremov was a Belarusian artist whoe migrated to Cancun in Mexico via Israel, and the United States, creating a distinctly unique visual style.

While the name of the artist may be unknown to you, his copious body of work is seen all over the world, so you’re more than likely familiar with at least a few of his paintings. Some of his works are extremely beautiful, and when he’s chosen the right subject, are vibrant and full of life.

The work chosen for this coin is just about perfect, in our view. Titled ‘Couple under one umbrella’ it’s a glorious riot of colour, completely different to the old renaissance works with their generally more muted pallettes. Afremov’s work is enhanced by its three-dimensionality, made possible by the pallette knife technique he employed, whereby oil paint is literally scraped and placed on the canvas with a metal knife. Obviously that can’t be reproduced on a coin like this, but it doesn’t seem to matter, as the reproduction is well realised, taking a circular crop from the rectangular original.

The concept of the series remains firmly intact. Smartminting is employed to create the impression of jigsaw puzzle pieces, with some left out and placed around the surface to suggest it’s a work in progress. Earlier coins we’ve seen exhibit a very crisp and defined strike, necessary to pull something like this off.

It’s a three-ouncer again, allowing the coin to stretch out to an impressive 65 mm diameter. The obverse is the common one for the series and also has some nice touches on it that tie in with the whole theme. There’s nothing generic about it. Packaging will be of a high-quality and the mintage is capped at 499 pieces.

Available from today, this is a fine release, in our view. It’s great to see a change from the seemingly constant flow of Da Vinci’s, Van Gogh’s, and especially Klimt paintings that appear on modern numismatics. Powercoin have shown with this, and the previous coin, that they’re not afraid to experiment, and we hope it continues. I’d love to see some of the Paleolithic cave art from places like Lascaux, but I do admit that might be a bit too weird for most…