In the Soviet art of the twenties there was a bacchanalia of various styles and directions, born of the artistic searches of the beginning of the century. There was no time for pragmatic Bolsheviks to understand the aesthetic merits of various pictorial movements, it was necessary to choose one path that was best understood by the masses, far from art criticism discussions.
The embodiment of this path was a talented master of realism - Brodsky. Isaac Izrailevich became a "court" artist, in which the Soviet government needed no less than any monarchy of the past.
Failed architect
If his parents could even see a little through the veil of the future, they would not assure little Isaac that the profession of an artist is too unreliable a way to secure a comfortable life. They liked the future architect by the name of Brodsky more. Isaac Izrailevich, whose family lived below the Pale of Settlement in the Tauride province, went a path unthinkable in another era. Imagine that their son would live in a large house in the center of the Russian capital, own a rich collection of works of art and become a personal painter of the rulers of a huge country, poor Jewish merchants from a small town Sofievka near Berdyansk simply could not.
Born in 1883, the future head of the Academy of Arts first wanted to become a musician. But then he liked to redraw the pictures from the church calendar. It turned out similarly, and he wanted to learn to draw with real artists. The closest similar educational institution was the Odessa Drawing School, which soon became the Art School at the Academy of Arts. Brodsky became his student in 1896. Isaac Izrailevich did not listen to the advice of his parents to study more reliable architecture and entered the painting department.
Student of Repin
The ability to please people on whom your fate depends, backed up by hard work and undeniable talent, has always helped Brodsky in life. It also allowed him in 1903 to become a student of the great Repin, when Isaac was transferred to the first year of the Academy in St. Petersburg after the brilliant graduation from the Odessa School. Repin's course was overcrowded, but Brodsky managed to get into the entrance exam for drawing living nature, which was conducted by the master. He got a place from where the model was visible from a very complex angle, but he managed to cope with this task. Among those whose work was highly appreciated by Ilya Efimovich, was Brodsky. For five years, Isaac Izrailevich was one of the favorite students of the best painter of Russia.
In addition to virtuoso technique and a keen look, the young artist took over from Repin his negative attitude to various "antics" in painting, to any deviations from a realistic reflection of nature. Unlike other students of Repin, who fell under the great influence of the teacher and began to blindly copy his manner of the master, Brodsky developed his own style, which was called "openwork" and which also became a role model. Repin defended his student when Brodsky was on the verge of being expelled from the Academy for caricatures of representatives of the authorities at the time of the general craze of students in politics.
Trip to europe
According to the results of training at the Academy, the best graduates - holders of a gold medal - were granted the right to continue their studies abroad. Brodsky receives the highest final award and the possibility of a paid trip to Europe. Isaac Izrailevich fruitfully spends time studying the masterpieces of the masters of the past and getting acquainted with new trends in painting. He works a lot and exhibited, earning a reputation as an established master. Following the tour, after discussing his work, the Academy decides to extend his trip for another six months.
During a craze for the search for new forms and trends in art, Brodsky did not escape the influence of new European painting. Isaac Izrailevich, whose biography represents the path of a convinced realist, used the motifs of art nouveau and symbolism in his canvases. But, following the precepts of his teacher and remembering Repin's words about "antics", he hostilely accepts the work of avant-garde artists. After visiting the workshops of Picasso, Braque, Matisse Brodsky forever becomes an adherent of traditional, realistic painting.
Master of salon painting
Among art historians there is a belief that if in the fall of 1917 in Russia there had not been a radical change in the social and political system, Brodsky would quickly have achieved the position and standard of living of such stars of salon or, in modern, “glamorous” painting, like Konstantin Makovsky and Henry Semiradsky. He had a lot for this: energy and industriousness, masterly skill, the ability to please people from high society, the ability, in the present, to "be in trend."
It is not known how sincerely the artist Brodsky welcomed the collapse of the autocracy and the subsequent victory of Soviet power. Isaac Izrailevich would surely be a successful painter somewhere in Paris or in New York. But he, unlike many intellectuals, remains in Russia and is experiencing global upheavals with her, however, knowing how to always be in the right place, near the people who became the head of a huge country.
Yesterday - Kerensky, today - Lenin
In Russia, there came a time when exquisite peaceful landscapes and sophisticated portraits of women became irrelevant, and Brodsky went to where the history was made to capture those who followed in front. After the February Revolution, the time came when the Russian advanced society freed from the shackles of the monarchy was in the hands of the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Kerensky, and the artist paints his portrait. On it, the former lawyer appears as a real hero, capable of reviving the country to a new glory. True, the artist finished this portrait after the arrival of other heroes.
Brodsky was one of the first to create picturesque images of Lenin and his associates, and the image of the main Bolshevik for a long time became for him the most important topic. Then he is fond of global multi-figure compositions: “Lenin and the manifestation” and especially the “Grand Opening of the Second Congress of the Comintern”. This colossal canvas depicts several hundred real people from whom portrait sketches were made. Brodsky showed his outstanding organizational skills, consonant with the era and demanded by his future life.
Artist, teacher, collector
Three main circumstances determined the life that Brodsky lived from the beginning of the 1920s. Isaac Izrailevich, painter No. 1 for the official authorities, stubbornly created a complete iconography of the Soviet leaders, with endless replication of its main images - Lenin and Stalin. To fulfill the main state order, he attracted a whole army of apprentices and often, like the head of the medieval workshop of painters, only made minor amendments to the paintings and signed.
The second most important thing was the revival of the academic system of art education. When he became director of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, it was the ruins left after the barbaric activities of those who thoughtlessly denied the legacy of the past, destroying both its spirit and its material stock, accumulated for decades. Brodsky's merits in the revival of this art temple are hard to deny.
The third component of his life - collecting - was a real passion. Among connoisseurs of Russian painting of that time there was no better expert than Brodsky. Isaac Izrailevich, whose photos of the interiors of the huge house are shown by walls hung with floor-to-ceiling paintings, put together a collection that is second in volume and significance after the collection of the Russian Museum. The circumstances under which it was replenished are shrouded in darkness, and the fact of her will is called Brodsky state forced due to party and KGB pressure.
Each has its own road
They say that when Brodsky invited Pavel Filonov to his sumptuous dinner , who was deprived of work, mercilessly crushed by criticism and power, poor and hungry, he did not dare to come - he was afraid to spoil his biography. He became an obstacle to the reputation of "red master", who lived in relation to his superiors on the principle of "What do you want?", Which Brodsky possessed among artists.
To use one, black or white, paint to describe the life path of any person means to make it flat and unambiguous. Isaac Brodsky did not deserve this because of his obvious talent, hard work and energy.