ornamental patterns

“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]

Yelena Polenova - The artist’s work in the collection of the Polenov Museum Reserve

Yelena Kashtanova

Article: 
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Magazine issue: 
#4 2011 (33)

Yelena Polenova was gifted in graphics and drawing, painting, ceramics, and the decorative arts, as well as an accomplished collector, researcher and educator... Her diverse personality and creative quest has always posed certain challenges for scholars.

Yelena Polenova - The artist’s work in the collection of the Polenov Museum Reserve

“God forbid you worry that the subjects of your art are interesting to the public, or think about the public at all while working — only then can you be worthy of being called an artist.”
Yelena Polenova to Praskovia Antipova. 1883.

"She lived in the magical world of the fairy tale". The work of Yelena Polenova at the Tretyakov Gallery

Olga Atroshchenko

Article: 
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Magazine issue: 
#4 2011 (33)

November 27 2010 marked the 160th anniversary of the birth of the remarkable Russian artist Yelena Dmitrievna Polenova (1850-1898), the sister of the famous landscape painter Vasily Polenov. To mark the artist’s anniversary, the Tretyakov Gallery prepared the exhibition titled “She lived in the magical world of the fairy tale”, which presented the most original and innovative of Polenova’s works, alongside archive documents, memorial photographs, books and magazines which revealed the artist’s singular social and artistic efforts.

"She lived in the magical world of the fairy tale"

November 27 2010 marked the 160th anniversary of the birth of the remarkable Russian artist Yelena Dmitrievna Polenova (1850-1898), the sister of the famous landscape painter Vasily Polenov. To mark the artist’s anniversary, the Tretyakov Gallery prepared the exhibition titled “She lived in the magical world of the fairy tale”, which presented the most original and innovative of Polenova’s works, alongside archive documents, memorial photographs, books and magazines which revealed the artist’s singular social and artistic efforts.

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