DOI issue:
No. 248 (November 1913)
DOI article:Pica, Vittorio: Three russian painters: Konstantin Somoff, Igor Grabar, and Philip Maliavine
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21208#0132
Three Russian Painters
individual note which has obtained for him much
success in the principal theatres of Russia.
Amongst Russian painters of pronounced na-
tional characteristics we must not omit Alexei
Riabushkine, who died in 1905, and achieved
great fame in portraying the national Muscovite
costumes of olden days, while depicting also
with uncommon psychological penetration the
peasants and artisans of the present day. Nor, in
speaking of this nationalist element in Russian art,
must we forget the landscape-painter Konstantin
Bogayevsky, the landscape and figure painter K.
Yuon, and the young Nikolai Rerich, who has
presented the old Slav legends in panels of
pronouncedly decorative character, of harmonious
tonality, restrained colouring, of summary and
conventionalised draughtsmanship, and of a
fantastic inventiveness which is in some measure
reminiscent of the Finnish
artist Axel Gallen. Philip
Maliavine I will reserve till
later, but mention must be
made here of Boris Kusto-
dieff, who has revealed him-
self as a true and powerful
master of portraiture. There
remains nothing further for
me to add to complete this
summary of present-day
Russian art except to men-
tion the two groups of young
painters who, in contradis-
tinction to those already
referred to, represent in
Russia the absolutely cos-
mopolitan tendency.
In contrast, or perhaps as
an antidote, to the realism
of Levitan, Korovine, and
Seroff and the romanticism
of Vrubel, all of whom have
turned to the past or to the
present, and who have been
constantly occupied with
direct observation of reali-
ties or concerned with fan-
tastic exaggeration of the
imaginative characteristics
of Russia and of its people,
we have the small group of
“Intellectuals” or “Deca-
dents,” almost all of them
primarily draughtsmen,
water-colourists, and illus- “ neige de mars”
trators, and only secondarily painters in oils, who
gathered round Serge Daghileff and attached
themselves to the illustrated review “ Mir
Isskustva ” (The World of Art), of which he was
the director. These men, all of whom live and
work in St. Petersburg, while the aforementioned
nationalist tendencies have hitherto flourished
in Moscow, proclaim themselves with courageous
sincerity to be of cosmopolitan aspirations and
seek for inspiration in the gallant world of the
seventeenth century, in the fashionable elegance
of 1830 and of the second French Empire, as well as
in ancient Italian or Greek epochs, which we find
more or less arbitrarily transfigured according to
the whim of the artist. Precious, refined, and of a
literary trait in their researches after lightness of
suggestion and of decoration, they appear to be
closely akin in inspiration to the most delicate fetes
BY IGOR GRABAR
I IO
individual note which has obtained for him much
success in the principal theatres of Russia.
Amongst Russian painters of pronounced na-
tional characteristics we must not omit Alexei
Riabushkine, who died in 1905, and achieved
great fame in portraying the national Muscovite
costumes of olden days, while depicting also
with uncommon psychological penetration the
peasants and artisans of the present day. Nor, in
speaking of this nationalist element in Russian art,
must we forget the landscape-painter Konstantin
Bogayevsky, the landscape and figure painter K.
Yuon, and the young Nikolai Rerich, who has
presented the old Slav legends in panels of
pronouncedly decorative character, of harmonious
tonality, restrained colouring, of summary and
conventionalised draughtsmanship, and of a
fantastic inventiveness which is in some measure
reminiscent of the Finnish
artist Axel Gallen. Philip
Maliavine I will reserve till
later, but mention must be
made here of Boris Kusto-
dieff, who has revealed him-
self as a true and powerful
master of portraiture. There
remains nothing further for
me to add to complete this
summary of present-day
Russian art except to men-
tion the two groups of young
painters who, in contradis-
tinction to those already
referred to, represent in
Russia the absolutely cos-
mopolitan tendency.
In contrast, or perhaps as
an antidote, to the realism
of Levitan, Korovine, and
Seroff and the romanticism
of Vrubel, all of whom have
turned to the past or to the
present, and who have been
constantly occupied with
direct observation of reali-
ties or concerned with fan-
tastic exaggeration of the
imaginative characteristics
of Russia and of its people,
we have the small group of
“Intellectuals” or “Deca-
dents,” almost all of them
primarily draughtsmen,
water-colourists, and illus- “ neige de mars”
trators, and only secondarily painters in oils, who
gathered round Serge Daghileff and attached
themselves to the illustrated review “ Mir
Isskustva ” (The World of Art), of which he was
the director. These men, all of whom live and
work in St. Petersburg, while the aforementioned
nationalist tendencies have hitherto flourished
in Moscow, proclaim themselves with courageous
sincerity to be of cosmopolitan aspirations and
seek for inspiration in the gallant world of the
seventeenth century, in the fashionable elegance
of 1830 and of the second French Empire, as well as
in ancient Italian or Greek epochs, which we find
more or less arbitrarily transfigured according to
the whim of the artist. Precious, refined, and of a
literary trait in their researches after lightness of
suggestion and of decoration, they appear to be
closely akin in inspiration to the most delicate fetes
BY IGOR GRABAR
I IO