Ekaterina Volgareva
Only on the websiteA large-scale exhibition of Petrov-Vodkin opened at the Russian Museum
The exhibition “Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin. To the 140th anniversary of his birth." The exhibition presents about 250 different works of the brilliant artist.
Modern Russia has never seen such a large-scale exhibition of Petrov-Vodkin. Paintings, graphic works, illustrations, sketches, theatrical scenery and a painted plate - a one-of-a-kind example of the artist's decorative and applied creativity - works collected throughout Russia were exhibited at the Russian Museum.
For the first time, works by Petrov-Vodkin were brought to the exhibition from the Tretyakov Gallery, Saratov Art Museum. A. N. Radishchev, Khvalynsk Art Museum, St. Petersburg Theater Museum, Museum of Theater Arts. A. A. Bakhrushin in Moscow, the State Hermitage, regional art museums and private collections in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The last time a Petrov-Vodkin exhibition was held at the Russian Museum was in 1966. At the same time, it is here that the most complete archive of his creations is collected: the museum houses 70 paintings and more than 700 graphic drawings by the artist, a significant part of which can also be seen on display.
Guests of the exhibition will be able to comprehend the entire difficult, varied, uneven creative path of the genius. His early student works and his last paintings, which Petrov-Vodkin painted when he was already a very sick man, suffering from progressive tuberculosis, are presented. Some of his canvases are filled with love, for example, portraits of his little daughter Lenochka, others are black, post-revolutionary works full of disappointment.
A special place is given to his religious quests, reflected in painting. In Soviet times, paintings depicting biblical scenes were, of course, not exhibited. And later they were not remembered; I rather associate the artist with the avant-garde revolutionary “Bathing of the Red Horse” (by the way, this painting was also delivered to St. Petersburg from the Tretyakov Gallery).
The variety of approaches used by the artist reveals his eternal search and movement. At the exhibition, guests will see realistic still lifes and landscapes, portraits of Pushkin and Akhmatova, executed in a unique manner, and late avant-garde quests. His different works are difficult to connect with each other stylistically, but if you look closely at each painting, the unique symbolism and plasticity of images characteristic of the artist’s brush become obvious.
Art critic and leading researcher at the Russian Museum Olga Nikolaevna Musakova, under whose leadership the exhibition was organized, spoke about the artist:
“It’s difficult to divide an artist by direction. Petrov-Vodkin said that it is not plastic techniques that dictate the form, but the design, ideas and feelings that overwhelm. He is a thinking, introspective artist. Therefore, I think it is hardly possible to talk about the purity of stylistic features. Each picture is a whole world.”
Olga Nikolaevna added that there are certain ideas and cliches about Petrov-Vodkin, like about Malevich with his “Black Square” or Picasso, but this is not the true face of the artist. The most recognizable paintings of any genius are only the stages to which the artist moved, and after that he continued the search for new meanings and forms.
“Petrov-Vodkin said that an artist is not an artist if he does not change throughout his life. If he doesn’t develop and doesn’t look for new ways,” says Olga Musakova.
It is the development, the constant change of form that is striking in the paintings of Petrov-Vodkin. In addition to the obvious artistic gift, he had an amazing desire for something new. Agree, few people know that Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin left not only an outstanding artistic legacy. He was also an excellent writer. He has written dramatic plays, stories, short stories, poems and much more. And one of the key goals of the large-scale exhibition is to introduce people to the multifaceted personality of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, which the Russian Museum managed to achieve.
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ST. PETERSBURG, May 21 - RIA Novosti. The exhibition "Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin. On the 140th anniversary of his birth" will open on May 24 in the Benois building of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, it will feature about 250 works by the painter.
According to the Russian Museum, these will be works of painting and graphics from the collections of the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Saratov Art Museum named after A. N. Radishchev, the St. Petersburg Theater Museum, the A. A. Bakhrushin Museum of Theater Art in Moscow, the State Hermitage Museum, and private collections St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Among the works will be shown such masterpieces of the artist as “The Bathing of the Red Horse”, “Dream”, “Our Lady of Tenderness of Evil Hearts”, “Petrograd Madonna”, “Death of a Commissar”, “Anxiety” and others. The exhibition will also include little-known and rarely exhibited works. For the first time, studies and sketches for them will be presented next to paintings from permanent exhibitions, allowing you to see the artist’s work process.
“Today it is more clear than ever that Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin is a genius of the 20th century and the degree of his influence on the culture of his era is commensurate with the importance of such personalities in art as Kazimir Malevich, Pavel Filonov, Wassily Kandinsky. The artist’s landmark works will be shown in the halls of the Benois building , covering all periods of his creative biography, works both known and forgotten, located in the collections of various museums and private collections,” note the organizers.
The general sponsor of the exhibition was VTB Bank. The exhibition will be open to visitors until August 20.
The Russian Museum is the world's largest museum of Russian art, a unique architectural and artistic complex in the historical center of St. Petersburg. This is the country's first state museum of Russian fine art. The grand opening of the Russian Museum to visitors took place on March 19 (7), 1898. The basis of the collection of the Russian Museum were objects and works of art transferred from the Winter, Gatchina and Alexander palaces, from the Hermitage and the Academy of Arts, as well as collections of private collectors donated to the museum.
The museum's collection numbers about 400 thousand exhibits and covers all historical periods and trends in the development of Russian art, the main types and genres, trends and schools from the 10th to the 21st centuries. The main retrospective exhibition of the museum is located in the Mikhailovsky Palace, built for the son of Emperor Paul I, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, and in the Benois building, originally built as an exhibition pavilion for the Academy of Arts.
Sotheby’s pre-auction exhibition “Russian avant-garde and Soviet contemporary art” in Sovintsentr, Moscow. July 2-7, 1988 Photo: Alexander Lavrentiev
The stakes for publicity. Sotheby's auction in Moscow, 1988
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
The first Sotheby’s auction in Moscow in 1988 is nothing short of legendary, and this title is well deserved. Thanks to the auction, which took place at the World Trade Center, Soviet unofficial artists were presented to foreign buyers along with the Russian avant-garde. “Garage” intends to reconstruct the events of 30 years ago. Spectators will be able to look at the auction, albeit virtually: there will be a VR installation at the exhibition. In addition to modern formats, there will also be quite traditional research materials (the project is positioned precisely as research): interviews with participants and organizers and archival documents. The top lot of that auction, “Fundamental Lexicon” (1986) by Grisha Bruskin, sold in 1988 to an unnamed collector from Munich for £242 thousand ($500 thousand), will also be exhibited at the Garage, along with the work “All About Him” (1971 ) Ilya Kabakov, which the then chairman of the board of directors of Sotheby's Alfred Taubman bought as a gift to the Soviet Ministry of Culture to create a museum of modern art of the USSR. They will be accompanied by the Russian avant-garde, including a drawing by Varvara Stepanova (circa 1924) and “Clown. Scene in the circus" (1935) by Alexander Rodchenko.
Fenxin hairpin. Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), China. Gold, stamp. Shanghai Art Museum. Photo: Moscow Kremlin Museums
Ming Dynasty: The Radiance of Learning
Moscow Kremlin Museums,exhibition hall of the Patriarchal Palace, exhibition hall of the Assumption Belfry
The era of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) became in China a time of rising education and at the same time nostalgia for antiquity - thinkers of that period tried to fill their everyday life with ancient objects, artists often imitated the best examples of works of the previous Tang and Song dynasties, and even a whole movement appeared in literature " adherents of ancient literature." The exhibition at the Kremlin Museums will show about 150 monuments of the era: porcelain, paintings, stone carvings and furniture. The Shanghai Art Museum, which will provide all the exhibits, is especially famous for its rich collection of the latter. An imaginary “office of an intellectual” from the Ming era will appear in the exhibition halls, along with its “treasures”—that’s what calligraphy items were called in China: ink pots, vessels for diluting ink, carved brush stands. The Kremlin Museums will also display picturesque scrolls, including the work “Peony, Banana Leaves and Stones” by one of the most famous artists of the era, Xu Wei, and precious porcelain, another indispensable attribute of the life of an intellectual. A special section of the exhibition will be dedicated to archaeological finds: there you will see jewelry and a set of porcelain figurines of an honorary escort from the tomb of relatives of the imperial dynasty.
Ilya Kabakov. "Footballer" 1964. Photo: ILYA AND EMILIA KABAKOV archive
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Not everyone will be taken into the future
State Hermitage, Main Staff
A retrospective of the most famous couple of conceptualists will move from Tate Modern to Russia this spring. An expanded and expanded version of the exhibition will be shown in St. Petersburg, and in September it will be hosted by the Tretyakov Gallery. In an interview with TANR, Emilia Kabakova said that for the exhibition they selected paintings, drawings, installations and models from the late 1960s, from Ilya Kabakov’s first conceptual painting “Football Player” (1964), which was long considered lost, to very recent things. According to the Kabakovs, this is the most complete display of their work. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Ilya Kabakov’s open letter, published in issue 5 of A-Z magazine, and the installation of the same name, shown at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and first reconstructed at Tate Modern.
Exposition “Heritage of the Future / Futures Histories” by Arseny Zhilyaev and Mark Dion at Casa dei Tre Oci. Venice, 2015. Photo: Alex Maguire/V-A-C Foundation
dress rehearsal
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Petrovka, 25
To create a large theatrical project, the efforts and collections of three institutions combined: the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the V-A-C Foundation and the non-profit art organization KADIST, based in San Francisco and Paris. The exhibition was curated by the new artistic director of the V-A-C Foundation and former art director of Tate Liverpool, Francesco Manacorda. From the Russian side, the exhibition includes works by Arseny Zhilyaev, Mikhail Tolmachev and Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, among foreign participants are British artist and director Phil Collins, his compatriot Lucy Mackenzie, Italian performance artist Chiara Fumai and others. The project will show how works of art live in storage and exhibition spaces and what they have in common with museum visitors. “The top floor of the building will act as a storage room, where works collected in groups will wait in the wings,” the museum says. “Each of them will have to play many different roles in the time and space of the state rooms of an ancient Moscow mansion.”
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. "Workers." 1926. Photo: State Russian Museum
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. To the 140th anniversary of his birth
State Russian Museum, Benois Wing
Spring
A year ago, the Russian Museum already hosted Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, along with his students and followers, but then the emphasis was on teaching and the artist’s circle - now the date will be celebrated with a full-fledged retrospective of one of the most important Russian and Soviet masters of the 20th century. With the help of sketches and drawings, the curators will reconstruct the process of creating the artist’s most famous paintings, which adorn the collections of the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery (things from its collection will also take part in the exhibition). In addition to famous masterpieces like “The Bathing of the Red Horse” (1912), which no retrospective can do without, viewers will be shown little-known and almost forgotten things from regional museums: works will be given by the Saratov Art Museum. A.N. Radishcheva, Khvalynsk Art Museum in the artist’s hometown and others. Petrov-Vodkin’s works for the theater will be provided by the St. Petersburg Museum of Theater and Musical Art, the Museum of the Bolshoi Drama Theater and the Theater Museum. A.A. Bakhrushin in Moscow.
Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin. Exhibition “Fine Art of the Edo Period”. Edo era map. 1840s. Photo: University of Texas Libraries
Fine art of the Edo period
State Museum of Fine Arts named after. A.S. Pushkin
“We have such exhibitions from Japan once every 10-20 years,” says curator Ainura Yusupova, leading researcher at the Pushkin Museum’s Graphics Department, about the exhibition. The central event of the cross Year of Russia and Japan, the exhibition “Fine Art of the Edo Period” promises to be unprecedented in scope and content. Most of the 120 works, covering the period from 1603 to 1868, will come to Moscow from Japan, which in itself is rare: in their homeland, some of the exhibits have the status of “national treasure”. This is also a unique opportunity to see Japanese painting, which is practically absent from Russian collections.
Mikhail Larionov. "Spring". From the series “Seasons”. 1912. Photo: State Tretyakov Gallery
Mikhail Larionov
State Tretyakov Gallery, New Tretyakov Gallery
About plans to unite with the Pompidou Center in order to at least temporarily collect the legacy of Mikhail Larionov in one place, Tretyakov Gallery back in 2015. Then it was exactly 100 years since Larionov, together with his like-minded wife Natalia Goncharova, left Russia - they never returned to their homeland. The collection of Goncharova and Larionov was divided after the death of the artist’s second wife, Alexandra Tomilina: most of the will was transferred to the Soviet government, but some share remained in France, and the division, according to Tretyakov Gallery director Zelfira Tregulova, also concerned individual series. In addition to the Pompidou Center, works for the exhibition - about 250 items in total - will be provided by domestic and foreign institutions, including the Russian Museum, the Ludwig Museum, Tate Modern, the Victoria and Albert Museum and others. Works related to Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons”, paintings and graphics created in Russia and France will be exhibited on Krymsky Val. Viewers will see another aspect of Larionov - a collector. It is widely known that the artist was interested in folk and naive art, and much less that he collected Russian and oriental popular prints and children's drawings. Larionov also had an extensive archive related to the history of Russian ballet, which will also be on view in the fall.
Georgy Nissky. "On my way". 1958-1964. Photo: Institute of Russian Realistic Art
Retrospective of George of Nyssa
Institute of Russian Realistic Art
September
The Institute of Russian Realistic Art plans to show a large retrospective of the singer of industrialization and socialist construction, Georgy Nyssa. The artist carried his love for the industrial landscape throughout his life - the son of a station paramedic, Nyssky more than once told how the Belarusian fields and forests crossed by rails left a deep impression on a child’s heart. It is the railway that is dedicated to one of Nyssa’s most remarkable works in the IRRI collection, the large “On the Road” (late 1950s), which he wrote for five whole years, constantly correcting the composition. Despite the fact that the private museum has many worthy things of Nyssa, the matter is not limited to them: exhibits are collected from a variety of collections, from the Tretyakov Gallery to the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts. Nyssa's works will be accompanied by works by his friends, including Alexander Deineka, and inspirations, including the post-impressionist Albert Marquet. During a trip to Moscow in 1934, he highly appreciated the painting of the then young Nyssa “Autumn. Semaphores" (1932) - this is how a pun was born about the French artist having “Nice taste.”
Isaac Levitan. "Autumn landscape with a church." Photo: State Russian Museum
Landscapes of Isaac Levitan and cinema
Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center
Autumn
The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center decided to draw a parallel between the “mood landscape” of Isaac Levitan (1860-1900) and cinema. Curator Ekaterina Krylova will compare Levitan’s lyrical and usually deserted paintings with shots of textbook examples of avant-garde cinema. The exhibition will feature fantastic perspectives on the intelligent ocean of the planet Solaris from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film of the same name, familiar views of the middle zone from Stanislav Rostotsky’s film “White Bim Black Ear” and “One Hundred Days After Childhood” by Sergei Solovyov and other examples of domestic arthouse.
The theme of the Museum Chambers this Saturday is “Exhibition for the 140th anniversary of the birth of the artist Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin in the Russian Museum”, the guest is the leading researcher of the Russian Museum, co-curator of the exhibition Olga Musakova.
Without exaggeration, this is the largest exhibition of Petrov-Vodkin, supplemented by private collections and collections of other museums. Some works are shown for the first time.
The last personal exhibition of Petrov-Vodkin at the Russian Museum was held in 1978, graphics were exhibited. Before this, the artist’s works were shown with banknotes in 1966, when his religious paintings were not presented. The last lifetime took place in 1936. It is clear that even then not all stories were made available to the public. So, at the last moment they removed “out of harm’s way” the painting “Housewarming Party” (Working Petrograd). It would seem that the topic is ideologically verified. And yet there is something in the faces of these new residents, in the dirty dishes of others in the reflection of the mirror, which makes one doubt the triumph of justice.
There are many textbook works at the exhibition, such as “Bathing the Red Horse,” “Mother,” “Violin,” but they are presented in the context of paintings that have not been previously exhibited, as well as next to graphic sketches. Which often look like completely independent works.
Here is Madonna and Child. Awakening", 1922. Written for the birth of a long-awaited daughter.
The image seems to be shabby. It is possible that it was used in the family as a head icon... Petrov-Vodkin was a deeply religious man, from a believing Old Believer family.
And at the same time he accepted the revolution and held high positions. He could have emigrated, but on principle returned to Soviet Russia.
“Head of Christ”, 1921, private collection, St. Petersburg.
Crucifixion, 1920s. Private collection, Moscow.
And around these same years, he finds the image of the new master of the country - the worker. This is how he is, a man of that time, 1926
A rarity at exhibitions, the painting is from the collection of the Central Museum of the Armed Forces. "After battle".
The poignant “Violin” and “Still Life with Inkwell”, between them. 1918 and 1934
Painted in 1934, the painting “Alarm.1919”. Genuine fear.
Who is he, Petrov-Vodkin? Avant-garde, representative of realism? Adept of religious art? Recognizable every time. Both in still life and in the program canvas.
Favorite dog.
But here he is, take a closer look.
Always demanding of yourself.
And in the 1890s, while still a student, a former sign maker.
1907, in search of a method.
Gaining a spherical, oblique perspective. 1921
Self-portrait 1926-1927.
A separate room is dedicated to the work of Petrov-Vodkin, a theater artist. Sketches of makeup and scenery. Some of them remained in plans and were not implemented on stage. It is interesting that the artist taught at Vsevolod Meyerhold’s stage performance courses.
Sketch for the production of The Brothers Karamazov, 1927
“Interior of the artist’s apartment”, 1920, ink, pen, watercolor. Private St. Petersburg collection.
Text: Ksenia Basilashvili.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Fantasy. 1925. Fragment. Canvas, oil. State Russian Museum
The last major exhibition of Petrov-Vodkin took place ten years ago - in 2008, the artist’s 130th anniversary was celebrated by the Radishchev Museum in Saratov, a city that can be considered close to the artist, who was born in Khvalynsk on the Volga in 1878. The State Russian Museum is celebrating a new anniversary—140 years.
Petrov-Vodkin did not stop working, despite tuberculosis, until his death in 1939, and his creative legacy is very large: the Russian Museum alone houses more than 70 paintings and 700 pieces of graphics, and in total the exhibition contains works from 20 museums and private collections. In addition, the catalog contains important paintings from the National Gallery of Armenia that the Tretyakov Gallery was unable to bring, but which are well known from reproductions, including “Portrait of Andrei Bely” from 1932 and “Portrait of Lenin” from 1934. Important works “In the Line of Fire” (1916), “Our Lady of the Tenderness of Evil Hearts” (1914-1915), “Fantasy” (1925) and “Workers” (1926) were shown at the Bolognese Museum of Modern Art MAMbo in the project “Revolution!” and took place in the last two halls of the exhibition only a week after the opening day. It is also known that the Tretyakov Gallery expects to get its “Bathing of the Red Horse” (1911) back without waiting for the exhibition to end.
All these circumstances, indicating that Petrov-Vodkin is important for various museums as a figure of global scale, of course, influenced the appearance and perception of the exhibition located in the right enfilade of the first floor of the Benois building. The exhibition was prepared by the department of painting of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, headed by Vladimir Lenyashin, its leading employee Olga Shikhireva and the curator of the drawing department Natalya Kozyreva. Unfortunately, there is no need to talk about the concept of the exhibition - if the first two of the five halls of the exhibition are arranged strictly according to years, then the chronological order gets confused and is replaced by a plot one, so that the last two halls were crammed with works from different periods indiscriminately, and the famous still life of 1917 with five yellow-green apples on a red drapery, he ended up hanging on the stairs leading to the second floor of the museum.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Apples. 1917. Oil on canvas. State Russian Museum
Petrov-Vodkin is in every history of Russian art, so paintings memorized by heart signal color in every room. But it is difficult to get a complete impression from the beginning to the end of the exhibition: apparently, the exhibition is addressed primarily to the summer visitor, a guest who does not ask questions and simply prayerfully bows to the art of Petrov-Vodkin - this is also noticeable in the style of the catalog article spread throughout the halls in explications, and in the tinting of the main exhibition stands in a sharp bright blue color.
Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin. To the 140th anniversary of his birth. Fragment of the exhibition. Courtesy State Russian Museum
However, if the modern mass viewer looks (through the smartphone screen) only at popular things, then the connoisseur needs immersion in the context. And in this case, creating this context for yourself by laying out a through route through these five halls is only possible if you focus on works that are not very well known - those that rarely leave the storerooms of the Russian Museum, brought from other museums or obtained from private collections.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. View from the window. 1920. Paper, ink, pen. Collection of the Romadin family. Courtesy State Russian Museum
Petrov-Vodkin is the uniqueness of vision turned into a method. The system of “spherical perspective”, developed in detail and enshrined in the artist’s texts, included a lot of practical observations, starting with a childhood impression of falling from the Volga cliff. At the same time, it is somewhat akin to the panorama seen from an airplane in the futuristic “aerial painting” of Tullio Crali and Osvaldo Peruzzi, and in general to the first two decades of the twentieth century, when the most constant quantities shifted and began to move. Petrov-Vodkin put synthesis above the decomposition of form and did not value cubism, but the desire to master “expanded vision” and achieve “planetary vision” directly unites him with such avant-garde figures as Mikhail Matyushin and Kazimir Malevich. In terms of the number of students and their devotion to the teacher in Petrograd-Leningrad in the 1920s, the Petrov-Vodkin school stood on a par with the “masters of analytical art” of Pavel Filonov, representing a completely different, but equally clear artistic method. Kuzma Sergeevich was created to teach and disseminate his ideas (which was well demonstrated by the exhibitions “” at the Russian Museum and “” at the Moscow Galeev Gallery in 2016).
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Seated woman. Sketch for the painting “The Shore”. 1907-1908. Paper, charcoal pencil, watercolor. State Russian Museum
The first hall provides an opportunity to see the formation of these ideas. It opens with eight drawings - these are sketches of male and female figures made around 1910, both for paintings that have not survived and are known only by names, and for the first large symbolist works - “The Shore” (1908) and “Dream” (1910). A separate segment of the hall is occupied by the student works of Petrov-Vodkin, who graduated in 1905 under the leadership of Valentin Serov from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Here, the all-Russian passion for painting by Anders Zorn of those years is shown by the large canvas of 1902 “Family”.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Family. 1902. Oil on canvas. Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg
In the center of the second hall is the famous “Bathing of the Red Horse” (1912), but the adjacent “Boys at Play” from 1916 from a private collection is much more interesting. Before us is an almost heraldic composition: a green field is diagonally divided by a blue ribbon. In the foreground are a trio of boys - the star-shaped outline formed by their bodies is correlated with small figures of angels playing in a field on the other side of the river. The shadows cast by all the heroes are painted with the same emerald green, the same pure color as the meadow - and this is undoubtedly the “Spiritual Meadow”. The canvas is three times smaller than the textbook painting with the same plot (1911, State Russian Museum) and is not much inferior to it in terms of its fullness of images - the whole life from teenage initiation to the posthumous existence of the soul is clearly readable.
The next room begins with religious painting, which continues with the works of the revolutionary 1918-1920s. The large and detailed graphic sheet, entitled "Retrospective" and dated 1920, is designed entirely in the spirit of medieval cosmology: in the center of the sheet are Golgotha and the crucifix, surrounded by successive scenes of human activities, from animals in the stable, through the cultivation of the land and the construction of the city to an astronomer on a tower, a ship under sail in the waves and a hermit's cell.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Retrospective. 1920. Paper, ink, pen.KGallery, St. Petersburg
It is worth remembering that the painting “1918 in Petrograd,” also known as the “Petrograd Madonna,” was created by Petrov-Vodkin at the same time when the artist (in 1919) wrote to his mother: “How can God give strength to us, the hungry, here?” : You can’t always find horse meat, oats, and they eat dogs and cats. There’s nothing to say about prices.”
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. 1918 in Petrograd. 1920. Oil on canvas. State Tretyakov Gallery
The fourth room contains works from the second half of the 1920s. Like many of his contemporaries, Petrov-Vodkin finds it difficult to develop his attitude to what is happening - the introduction of the NEP, the internal party struggle of factions, cultural policy. In 1927, he left a note: “Even the destruction of the school that is happening before my eyes (we are talking about teaching at Vkhutein - P.G.), to which a lot of strength and hope was given, is not the main reason. Of course, the days of '26 pecked at me at all the seams with little things and all sorts of things. People are incompatible with each other. Mistrust and selfishness are internecine... Specially intriguing types emerge, whom the revolution somehow restrained and who are now akimbo, like wolves sensing carrion. The anger on all sides is unreasonable. Hyper-partisan, confused anger." His art focuses on life with his family, he paints his wife, his long-awaited daughter, and city views. The graphics presented here are impressions from the Parisian trip of 1925-1926. The works of this time form artistic parallels with the paintings of Boris Grigoriev, but the surface of any Petrov-Vodkin canvas is much more complexly intonated. In contrast to Grigoriev’s “stuffing”, the compositional and semantic balance of his works is not indifferent, but always intense, as in “Earthquake in the Crimea” (1927-1928), which concludes the exhibition in the hall.
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Earthquake in Crimea. 1927-1928. Canvas, oil. State Russian Museum
The paintings in the next room are about “an artist in the process of creative reforging,” whose attempts to accept a new reality became a failure. Although outwardly everything is successful and Petrov-Vodkin is one of the status of Soviet authors: in 1930 he received the title of Honored Artist, in 1932 he was elected the first chairman of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Artists and a deputy of the Leningrad City Council, in 1936 he moved into an apartment in cooperative house RABIS - Association of Artists on Kirovsky (Kamennoostrovsky) Avenue.
One can only guess what tragic contradictions the terminally ill artist in Leningrad during the Kirov Stream was torn apart by. A small canvas from 1936, “On a Tram,” and Petrov-Vodkin’s last large-format work, the painting “Housing House,” painted for the 1937 exhibition “Industry of Socialism,” are evidence of this. The task is to show “the Leningrad proletariat at the moment of transition to peaceful construction,” and the artist’s article about this in the Pravda newspaper in 1936 is titled “Work well and joyfully.” The descriptive composition, reminiscent of the late Itinerants (20 figures, including a newborn baby and a parrot), lacks the air and breadth of space that became the hallmark of all Petrov-Vodkin’s art. The work, rejected by the exhibition committee despite the author's verbose explanations, put a social diagnosis on the time that had come and turned into an involuntary satire. “Thus, an anecdote, a story begins to develop in order to be able to continue the event that happened here,” with these words the artist concludes a speech at the Leningrad Union of Artists about the plot of “Housewarming” less than a year before his death.
