DOI issue:
Nr. 202 (December, 1913)
DOI article:Pica, Vittorio: Three Russian painters: Konstantin Smoff, Igor Grabar, and Philip Maliavine
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43454#0174
Three Russian Painters
plains, its turbid lakes and sparsely planted beech-
woods, and its melancholy villages, and en-
deavoured to depict its character and that of the
rustic population inhabiting it in paintings of grey
tonality, monotonous in their uniformity, yet of
powerful appeal in their emotional attributes.
The most characteristic artist and the least tinged
with Occidentalism in the whole range of modern
Russian painting is undoubtedly Mikhail Vrubel,
who, unappreciated and derided by his com-
patriots during the best period of his career, was,
not, perhaps, without some exaggeration, lauded as
an inspired pioneer at the close of his life, when he
had become blind and was confined in an asylum.
Vrubel was gifted with a fertile and impetuous
imagination, a strange mystic attraction towards
regions of the supernatural, and an admirable
balance of decorative composition. Even in the
midst of his most extravagant allegorical concep-
tions his work is always delicate and vivacious in
turn. While he has not had followers in his
mysticism, he has at any rate found among the
younger generation imitators and disciples of his
decorative fantasies, and of these the most interest-
ing are Paul Kousnetsoff, Nikolai Millioti, and
Tatiana Lugovsky.
A decorator more brilliant than Vrubel, more
finished, more restrained, but at the same time
more superficial, though of great suggestive talent,
is Alexander Golovine, who, as Korovine and Bakst
have done lately, has specialised in scene-painting,
and has invested his designs with a profoundly
“la dame en bleu”
108
BY KONSTANTIN SOMOFF
plains, its turbid lakes and sparsely planted beech-
woods, and its melancholy villages, and en-
deavoured to depict its character and that of the
rustic population inhabiting it in paintings of grey
tonality, monotonous in their uniformity, yet of
powerful appeal in their emotional attributes.
The most characteristic artist and the least tinged
with Occidentalism in the whole range of modern
Russian painting is undoubtedly Mikhail Vrubel,
who, unappreciated and derided by his com-
patriots during the best period of his career, was,
not, perhaps, without some exaggeration, lauded as
an inspired pioneer at the close of his life, when he
had become blind and was confined in an asylum.
Vrubel was gifted with a fertile and impetuous
imagination, a strange mystic attraction towards
regions of the supernatural, and an admirable
balance of decorative composition. Even in the
midst of his most extravagant allegorical concep-
tions his work is always delicate and vivacious in
turn. While he has not had followers in his
mysticism, he has at any rate found among the
younger generation imitators and disciples of his
decorative fantasies, and of these the most interest-
ing are Paul Kousnetsoff, Nikolai Millioti, and
Tatiana Lugovsky.
A decorator more brilliant than Vrubel, more
finished, more restrained, but at the same time
more superficial, though of great suggestive talent,
is Alexander Golovine, who, as Korovine and Bakst
have done lately, has specialised in scene-painting,
and has invested his designs with a profoundly
“la dame en bleu”
108
BY KONSTANTIN SOMOFF