Majolica

“I am in Abramtsevo Once More..."[1]

Eleonora Paston

Article: 
MUSEUMS OF RUSSIA
Magazine issue: 
#3 2021 (72)

Mikhail Vrubel’s creative fascination with ceramics began in 1890, soon after his arrival in Moscow in autumn 1889. There, thanks to his old friends Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, he became close with Savva Mamontov, a vivid and multifaceted character, someone who was possessed of a special sensitivity to new trends in art along with an ability to recognise talented people and understand the essence of their gift. A major entrepreneur and patron of the arts, in the 1870s and 1890s, he collected a circle of artists, later known as the Abramtsevo Circle, which spanned the generations: Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov, Viktor Vasnetsov and the sculptor Mark Antokolsky from the older generation; Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Yelena Polenova, Apollinary Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel, Mikhail Nesterov and Ilya Ostroukhov, among others, from the younger generation.

“I am in Abramtsevo Once More..."

“Everything that Vrubel tried his hand at was classically good. I worked with him in Mamontov's studio at Abramtsevo and I would look at something he was working on, be it a sketch or some pitcher or vase, or a head of an African woman or a tiger, and I would think 'everything here is where it should be', that there is nothing which could be re-done. That, I think, is the mark of classicism. He had the ability to express something of 'himself' in even an insignificant ornament.”[2]

"All shall be forgotten, and time will end..."

Marina Rakhmanova

Article: 
HERITAGE
Magazine issue: 
#3 2021 (72)

The composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) and the painter Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910) were among the greatest Russian artists of the Silver Age. They did, however, belong to different generations - Vrubel’s entire career fit into this exceptional period in Russian cultural life, whereas Rimsky-Korsakov began writing music as early as the 1860s. Nonetheless, the composer reached his prime and created his best work in exactly that era, the late 19th to the early 20th centuries.

"All shall be forgotten, and time will end..."

“Tsar Berendey is a portrait of Nikolai Andreyevich [Rimsky-Korsakov].”
From Anna Vrubel's letter to Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel. July 29, 1909*

* From Anna Vrubel's letter to Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel. July 29, 1909*

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