Portrait

"He Did Not Live His Life in a Shell..."

Tatiana Karpova

Article: 
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Magazine issue: 
#3 2011 (32)

There have been four solo exhibitions of Nikolai Ge’s art in his homeland in the period since his death in 1894: a posthumous one in St. Petersburg in 1895; then another from the Ukraine museum collections in Kiev in 1956-1957; the third one in 1970-1971 which toured in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev and Minsk; and the fourth from 1981 which was held in Moscow. The most extensive exhibition was that of 1970-1971, already 40 years ago, but it did not feature works from foreign museums and private collections. That exhibition’s catalogue, prepared by Natalya Zograf, was most comprehensive and informative, but had very few illustrations. Two new generations of the art-going public have little knowledge of this outstanding master, so to introduce Ge’s legacy to the contemporary viewer will bring new attention back to his work.

"He Did Not Live His Life in a Shell..."

There have been four solo exhibitions of Nikolai Ge’s art in his homeland in the period since his death in 1894: a posthumous one in St. Petersburg in 1895; then another from the Ukraine museum collections in Kiev in 1956-1957; the third one in 1970-1971 which toured in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev and Minsk; and the fourth from 1981 which was held in Moscow. The most extensive exhibition was that of 1970-1971, already 40 years ago, but it did not feature works from foreign museums and private collections.

The Plastovs - A Family of Artists

Tatyana Plastova

Article: 
ARTISTIC DYNASTY
Magazine issue: 
#4 2011 (33)

The Plastovs are an ancient Russian family. Their ancestors, many of whom were priests, lived in the Arzamas region. Legend has it that one of the Plastovs was a cleric in an area populated by the Mordvins (the Erzya people). Their family surname then was Sinitsyn, and among them was, in the late 18th-early 19th centuries a certain Vasily Sinitsyn, a deacon fond of painting. One of the Sinitsyn family was an apprentice with the icon painter Plastov — he painted icons with the artist travelling from village to village. When his mentor died, the apprentice took his family name: at first he was called Plastov the apprentice, and then simply Plastov. The first family member about whom anything is reliably known is Gavrila Stepanovich Plastov (1801-c.1843), whose father is known to have been a cleric. Gavrila studied at (but did not graduate from) a seminary in Kazan. He also studied at an art school in Arzamas founded in 1802 by the painter Alexander Stupin. Founded on academic principles (Stupin himself had studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg), the school had a curriculum combining professional education with a large range of general subjects and was endorsed by the Academy. The school placed a special emphasis on teaching icon painting.

The Plastovs - A Family of Artists

The Plastovs are an ancient Russian family. Their ancestors, many of whom were priests, lived in the Arzamas region. Legend has it that one of the Plastovs was a cleric in an area populated by the Mordvins (the Erzya people). Their family surname then was Sinitsyn, and among them was, in the late 18th-early 19th centuries a certain Vasily Sinitsyn, a deacon fond of painting. One of the Sinitsyn family was an apprentice with the icon painter Plastov — he painted icons with the artist travelling from village to village.

LUCIAN FREUD: Rebel with a Cause

Marina Vaizey

Article: 
INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA
Magazine issue: 
#4 2011 (33)

Ritualistic, spontaneous, improvisatory, disciplined, anarchic, unfashionable, indifferent, insatiable, obsessed, risk-taking yet curiously wedded to routines: Lucian Freud’s life (19222011) was a mass of self-imposed contradictions, while his art was almost alarmingly focused, intense and unremitting, and the product of unvarying determination. He never, from his hallucinatory early drawings, prints and paintings on a relatively small scale to the paintings of his last decades, with rich thick impasto, and occasionally crowded with figures, deviated from his obsession not only with the observed world, but his observed world. The exhibition “Lucian Freud Portraits”, running at London’s National Portrait Gallery until May 2012, collects more than 100 works from museums and private collections — the first major show since the artist died on 20 July 2011, but in which he was involved until his death. It will perhaps be the culmination of his lifetime’s preoccupation with private faces in public places, and public faces in private places — for many of those he painted were never identified by name.

LUCIAN FREUD: Rebel with a Cause

Ritualistic, spontaneous, improvisatory, disciplined, anarchic, unfashionable, indifferent, insatiable, obsessed, risk-taking yet curiously wedded to routines: Lucian Freud’s life (19222011) was a mass of self-imposed contradictions, while his art was almost alarmingly focused, intense and unremitting, and the product of unvarying determination.

A Shared Creativity. Romans Suta and Alexandra Belcova

Natalja Jevsejeva

Article: 
“GRANY” FOUNDATION PRESENTS
Magazine issue: 
#4 2011 (33)

There are a number of successful artistic couples in 20th-century Russian art: Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Mikhail Matyushin and Yelena Guro, Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Drevin and Nadezhda Udaltsova, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. Latvian art had Alexandra Belcova (Aleksandra Beltsova) (1892-1981) and Romans (Roman) Suta (1896-1944). Three years ago, in October 2008, their former apartment in Riga became a museum — due to the efforts of their daughter, Tatiana Suta, who preserved her parents’ art and, with the participation of the Latvian National Museum of Art, their vast collection of paintings, drawings and decorative porcelain can now be seen by the art-loving public.

A Shared Creativity. Romans Suta and Alexandra Belcova

There are a number of successful artistic couples in 20th-century Russian art: Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Mikhail Matyushin and Yelena Guro, Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Drevin and Nadezhda Udaltsova, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. Latvian art had Alexandra Belcova (Aleksandra Beltsova) (1892-1981) and Romans (Roman) Suta (1896-1944).

Chaim Soutine - The Pain and Beauty of the World

Natalya Apchinskaya

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

Throughout the 19th century Paris was the artistic capital of the world, and it was there at the beginning of the 20th century that the art of the new era took shape. Marc Chagall wrote that “... back then, the sun of Art was only shining over Paris”, and young artists from different countries, mostly from Eastern Europe, flocked there. That international community of outstanding artists became known as the “École de Paris” (the Paris School). Among the highlights of the “Paris School” exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Autumn 2011 was the work of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943).

Chaim Soutine - The Pain and Beauty of the World

Throughout the 19th century Paris was the artistic capital of the world, and it was there at the beginning of the 20th century that the art of the new era took shape. Marc Chagall wrote that “... back then, the sun of Art was only shining over Paris”, and young artists from different countries, mostly from Eastern Europe, flocked there. That international community of outstanding artists became known as the “École de Paris” (the Paris School).

“The East, Nationality and the West”

Irina Vakar, Tatiana Levina, Tatiana Mikhienko

Article: 
KNAVE OF DIAMONDS
Magazine issue: 
Special issue. KNAVE OF DIAMONDS

This phrase happened to be the title of a fruitful debate held in 1913. Short though it was, it represented one of the most acute problems in early avant-garde art. Painters, poets and art critics - those who created new Russian art and those who were against it - paid written attention to the subject in those days. It was not the first time that the Russian innovators faced the problem of self-identification. It had been a concern for a few years already, but before it had been expressed in the stylistics and choice of themes of their pictures only, rather than in the theoretical conclusions or statements. The complexity of the situation stemmed from the fact that the young artists traced their artistic roots back both to the French painting tradition and to the national, popular folk culture which they believed to have originated in the East. This combination allowed different trends to exist simultaneously in their painting: the primitive co-existed with Postimpressionism and Fauvism, “quotations” from Henri Matisse could be found next to the “lubok” (popular woodblock prints), while “quotations” from Paul Cezanne could be seen alongside the devices of shop-sign painting. Natalia Goncharova, one of the most notable figures of the movement, insisted that “it is necessary to blend the 'alien' art with the native one”. But what was to be considered “alien” or pure Russian at that point? Some of the works of the members of the “Knave of Diamonds” group of the end of the 1900s and through the 1910s can be interpreted as part of their dialogue with the French painters, as well as their reflection on their own roots.

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This phrase happened to be the title of a fruitful debate held in 1913. Short though it was, it represented one of the most acute problems in early avant-garde art. Painters, poets and art critics - those who created new Russian art and those who were against it - paid written attention to the subject in those days.

Human Comedy and the Drama of Life in the Art of Pavel Fedotov

Svetlana Stepanova

Article: 
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Magazine issue: 
#2 2015 (47)

THE ART OF PAVEL FEDOTOV (1815-1852) HAS A UNIVERSAL APPEAL. THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY EXHIBITION MARKING THE BICENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH INTRODUCES THIS CREATOR OF WELL-KNOWN AND POPULAR IMAGES AS A SUPERB GRAPHIC ARTIST, WHO GAVE HIS SMALL-SCALE "INTIMATE PIECES" A DEPTH COMMENSURATE WITH HIS PLACE AND CENTRAL ROLE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE.

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THE ART OF PAVEL FEDOTOV (1815-1852) HAS A UNIVERSAL APPEAL. THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY EXHIBITION MARKING THE BICENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH INTRODUCES THIS CREATOR OF WELL-KNOWN AND POPULAR IMAGES AS A SUPERB GRAPHIC ARTIST, WHO GAVE HIS SMALL-SCALE "INTIMATE PIECES" A DEPTH COMMENSURATE WITH HIS PLACE AND CENTRAL ROLE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE.

The Power of Truth and Light

Boris Nemensky

Article: 
EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS
Magazine issue: 
#2 2015 (47)

BORIS NEMENSKY BEGAN HIS SERVICE IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR AS A 19-YEAR-OLD ENLISTED SOLDIER AND ARTIST EMBEDDED WITH THE ARMY. THE "MUNITIONS" HE CARRIED ON HIS BACK WERE THOSE ALREADY TESTED BY ARTISTS FROM THE GREKOV STUDIO OF WAR ARTISTS WHO HAD PRECEDED HIM TO THE FRONT LINE: A HOME-MADE SKETCH-BOOK FOR DRAWING ON PAPER, WHICH WAS SUITABLE FOR DRAWING IN ALL ELEMENTS, WHETHER STANDING, SITTING OR LYING DOWN. THE YOUNG ARTIST'S MISSION, AS STATED BY GLAVPUR (THE CHIEF DEPARTMENT ON POLITICAL MATTERS OF THE SOVIET ARMY AND NAVY), WAS TO CREATE "A PICTORIAL RECORD OF REAL EVENTS AT THE FRONT". HERE, NEMENSKY REMEMBERS HIS WARTIME EXPERIENCES, AND THE EFFECT THAT THOSE WAR YEARS HAD ON HIS SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENT AS AN ARTIST.

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Борис НеменскийBORIS NEMENSKY BEGAN HIS SERVICE IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR AS A 19-YEAR-OLD ENLISTED SOLDIER AND ARTIST EMBEDDED WITH THE ARMY. THE "MUNITIONS" HE CARRIED ON HIS BACK WERE THOSE ALREADY TESTED BY ARTISTS FROM THE GREKOV STUDIO OF WAR ARTISTS WHO HAD PRECEDED HIM TO THE FRONT LINE: A HOME-MADE SKETCH-BOOK FOR DRAWING ON PAPER, WHICH WAS SUITABLE FOR DRAWING IN ALL ELEMENTS, WHETHER STANDING, SITTING OR LYING DOWN.

"HIS DISTINCTIVENESS... IS INTACT"*

Eleonora Paston

Magazine issue: 
Special issue. IVAN POKHITONOV. THE ARTIST SORCERER

THE SOLO SHOW OF IVAN PAVLOVICH POKHITONOV, TITLED “THE ARTIST-SORCERER”, DEDICATED TO THE ARTIST’S 160th ANNIVERSARY, IS BEING HELD AT THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY IN THE “YEAR OF FRANCE IN RUSSIA”, AND ITS MIRROR EVENT, “RUSSIA IN FRANCE”. ALTHOUGH UNPLANNED, THIS OVERLAP IS EXTREMELY NATURAL. IT WOULD BE HARD TO FIND ANOTHER ARTIST OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19th-EARLY 20th CENTURIES WHOSE OEUVRE REFLECTS RUSSO-FRENCH CONNECTIONS AS NATURALLY AS POKHITONOV.

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* Abridged version of the article published in the "Tretyakov Gallery" magazine No.1 2010 (26). Pp. 64 - 75.

"My home is always there, in the heaven's vault..." The bicentenary of Mikhail Lermontov's birth

Yevgeny Bogatyrev

Article: 
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Magazine issue: 
#1 2015 (46)

THE YEAR 2014 MARKED THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF MIKHAIL LERMONTOV'S BIRTH. ONE OF THE SERIES OF EVENTS ORGANIZED BY THE STATE A.S. PUSHKIN MUSEUM TO COMMEMORATE THIS IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY IS THE ALL-RUSSIAN EXHIBITION PROJECT, "MY HOME IS ALWAYS THERE, IN THE HEAVEN'S VAULT..." THIS PROJECT RECEIVED FINANCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT FROM THE RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND THE MOSCOW CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE, AND INCLUDED 37 PARTICIPANTS, AMONG THEM MAJOR RUSSIAN MUSEUMS AND ARCHIVES, LIBRARIES, THEATRES, AND PRIVATE COLLECTORS. IT WAS THE FIRST EVENT OF SUCH MAGNITUDE IN RUSSIA IN 70 YEARS: IN 1941, WHEN THE COUNTRY WAS PREPARING A FITTING COMMEMORATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE POET'S DEATH, ALL PLANS HAD TO BE SET ASIDE. EVEN THOUGH A MAJOR ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION OPENED ON JULY 26, ON THE FOLLOWING DAY ITS ORGANIZERS HAD TO START PACKING ITS EXHIBITS TO BE SENT AWAY TO SAFETY.

"My home is always there, in the heaven's vault..." The bicentenary of Mikhail Lermontov's birth

THE YEAR 2014 MARKED THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF MIKHAIL LERMONTOV'S BIRTH. ONE OF THE SERIES OF EVENTS ORGANIZED BY THE STATE A.S. PUSHKIN MUSEUM TO COMMEMORATE THIS IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY IS THE ALL-RUSSIAN EXHIBITION PROJECT, "MY HOME IS ALWAYS THERE, IN THE HEAVEN'S VAULT..." THIS PROJECT RECEIVED FINANCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT FROM THE RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND THE MOSCOW CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE, AND INCLUDED 37 PARTICIPANTS, AMONG THEM MAJOR RUSSIAN MUSEUMS AND ARCHIVES, LIBRARIES, THEATRES, AND PRIVATE COLLECTORS.

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