A truly unique personality was the famous Russian artist Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin. Pictures, stories, memoirs, new techniques in painting, the fruits of rich pedagogical activity, he left us a legacy. His fate evolved with the same kaleidoscopy with which his ingenious works appeared to the world.
Heritage of the master
The most famous paintings of the artist are “Portrait of Anna Akhmatova”, “1918 in Petrograd”, “Bathing the Red Horse”, “Death of the Commissioner”, “A. S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg ”,“ Violin ”,“ Youth ”,“ Thirsty Warrior ”,“ Fisherman's Daughter ”,“ Morning Still Life ”,“ Beach ”. This, of course, is far from the whole list of the artist’s paintings. Petrov-Vodkin created paintings in all known genres - portraits, still lifes, landscapes, embodied everyday, historical and allegorical subjects. Each of his works breathes an original perception of the world and spiritual independence.
The origins of creative personality
Among contemporaries who worked “at the turning point” of two centuries - two dramatically different eras from each other, it is Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin who is distinguished by his special style and delightful artistic audacity. The description of the paintings created by the master does not go without mentioning the innovative principles and techniques born in the artist’s manner, oddly enough, from a biased study of the painting of distant antiquity.
The first overwhelming shock for the artist, almost a boy, was the Novgorod icons that he saw in the house of familiar Old Believers. This happened at a time when the family lived in Khvalynsk - a cozy city surrounded by greenery on the Volga. Joyful fairy-tale pictures, which were drawn in the presence of Kuzma by a neighbor and family friend Andrei Kondratich, also joined these impressions. The boy himself tried to draw, surprising his parents with skillful sketches. In the environment in which Petrov-Vodkin was born and grew up, the paintings were not considered a great value, and the artist's work was perceived as something like pampering. Coming from a family of a shoemaker and maid, Kuzma Sergeevich more than once mentioned that, while drawing, he felt like something like a bohemian barchuk. Did his relatives think at that time that the name of their offspring would go down in the annals of history and decorate the collections of famous museums, such as the famous Tretyakov Gallery, whose paintings are known to the whole civilized world!
Finding your own path
In those years when the fate of the artist did not look through the path prepared for the boy from the lower layers of society, providence persistently pushed the young man to the art of painting. After graduating from the secondary urban school, Kuzma began to work in ship repair workshops and was preparing to enter the railway school. In the fall, he left for Samara, could not stand the test and then completely surrendered to his passion. Interrupting casual work, Kuzma decided to study painting in the Painting Classes of Fedor Burov. It was a useful experience, but he did not give substantial knowledge. Pupils were mostly engaged in academic theory and never once took up nature. After the death of the teacher, Petrov-Vodkin tried to get a job as an icon painter. Together with classmates, he organized a team of signage makers. However, neither one nor the other enterprise was successful. This did not detract from the young man’s determination to paint. From Samara, he moved to his native Khvalynsk for the summer.
Fateful meeting
Luck came from the other side: a lady, the sister of the mistress, came from Petersburg to the house where the artist’s mother was in the service of the gentlemen, with the intention of building a cottage in Khvalynsk. For this purpose, a court architect was invited, who was struck by the drawings of Kuzma. He offered to arrange a young man to study in the capital. In the same year, Petrov-Vodkin entered the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron Stieglitz, who graduated from its walls masters of applied art. Perseverance and accuracy were appreciated here, while painting was practically not taught. A diligent and interested student, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin could reach great heights in the craft, but the talent drew him further - the young man lacked the rich and free colors of the painting. If he had stayed as part of the craft, we would never have seen either his masterpiece Bathing the Red Horse, or other expressive paintings.
Greedy interest in science and art
A new page in the life of a novice artist is the transition to the Moscow School of Painting, in which the idols of youth, Valentin Serov, Isaac Levitan, Konstantin Korovin, Martiros Saryan, then started teaching. After the provincial Khvalynsk and academic Petersburg, Petrov-Vodkin plunges headlong into the democratic and vibrant life of Moscow. He longs to embrace everything, to know the laws of the universe. The artist learns to play the violin, comprehends the basics of physics and chemistry, writes short stories and plays.
A journey that has turned consciousness
At the beginning of the new century, a young man was seized with a desire to go around the world. He takes a bicycle with the route in his head: “Warsaw – Munich – Italy”. Kuzma only managed to get to Germany. Here the young man enters the school of Anton Ashbe, highly appreciated by Russian artists. New places, lifestyle, works of art gave the young draftsman a lot of fruitful impressions. All this peculiarly and happily refracted in the painting of Petrov-Vodkin.
The artist came to Italy almost five years later. He longed to see Vesuvius. Strong elements captivated his imagination. Having risen to the shaking and breathing fire vent, the young artist Petrov-Vodkin experienced sensations that, according to his testimony, forever changed his understanding of life and art, shocked his creative consciousness.
The painting "Bathing the red horse"
The artist created this painting in 1912, when he was about 34 years old. According to researchers, the idea of ​​the picture arose from the artist after his student Sergei Kalmykov, in the framework of his academic work, painted red horses. There is an opinion that the first version of the painting “Bathing the Red Horse” (it did not survive) was created on the estate of a friend of the general, where the artist and his wife were invited by the friendly owners. The prototype of the animal in the central part of the canvas was a real horse named Boy. Later, in Petersburg, Petrov-Vodkin re-painted the picture. Sergey Kalmykov inspired the master as a model for the main character. In the face of a slender young man sitting astride a horse, the traits of a student of the artist are guessed.
Symbols of the Silver Age
The theme of bathing horses, for the most part with nudity, was extremely popular in the painting of the early twentieth century. Among compatriots, bathing horses and people were painted by Arkady Plastov, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Valentin Serov and other painters. Embodying indomitable energy, valor and enchanting grace, the stallion with the rider sitting on it represented the power of the elements, guided by the strength of spirit and mind. The boy’s athletic and muscular body, which we see in the painting “Bathing the Red Horse”, is also in line with the artistic addictions of the beginning of the last century. The hymn to plasticity and sophistication to a well-built male body sounded not only in the works of talented painters, but also in the Diaghilev ballet performances thundered all over the world.
"There are no such horses."
This was precisely the main rebuke that Petrov-Vodkin heard in his address. “Bathing the Red Horse”, the work that caused as much controversy as the delighted responses, is clearly inspired by the early impressions that the artist once received in the icon painting workshop. The symbolic red horse is present in the ancient Russian icon, for example, in the image of the Archangel Michael Saints Boris and Gleb, etc. In the painting of Petrov-Vodkin, this color is also allegorical. He personifies the will and swiftness, uncompromisingness and thirst for the new, which pre-revolutionary Russia was so eager for. In icon painting, the red color symbolizes a crowned and effective power, our compatriots who lived a hundred years ago were endowed with the same power as an awakened and ready for change country.
Artistic features of the canvas
A magnificent picture unfolds in front of the viewer on a spherical perspective, mesmerizing with rounded lines. According to the artist, such an image of perspective most accurately conveys the ideological pathos of the role of Man in the Universe. In the foreground is a red horse with a confident and gracefully mounted rider. In the middle part of the canvas - in the water - the figures of a white horse, which is pulled under the bridle by her dismounted rider, and a light scarlet stallion with a rider, we see him from the back. This entire group, including the central boy on horseback, creates a whirling movement, underlined by the slow cycle of lake water. The background of the picture is the coast, also made with rounded regular lines.
The power of colors
The color blends wonderfully and contrasts in the picture. A great connoisseur of exquisite color palette appears here in front of the audience Petrov-Vodkin. “Bathing the Red Horse” is an example of how the semantic decision of a picture is expressed in the language of color. The cool blue-green tones of the lake surface reflecting the sky, along which smooth circles diverge with flexible jets, as well as a semicircular strip of the pink shore with green interspersed bushes become the ideal backdrop for a bright scarlet stallion and a dark-skinned, almost golden boy, which are the compositional and substantial center of the picture .
What the Madonna is talking about
Another equally colorful and symbolic work of the master was the canvas “1918 in Petrograd” created in 1920, nicknamed the “Petrograd Madonna”. This canvas also complements the paintings of the Tretyakov Gallery (photo below).
The picture is striking in drama and gentle touching harmony. The features of a young Bolshevik, who carefully holds her baby in her arms, are full of serene peace and femininity in a world engulfed by fundamental changes. Everything is in a rapid movement, but eternal
motherly love and beauty are inescapable.
Why did the commissar die
The work of Petrov-Vodkin is owned not only by the Moscow Tretyakov Gallery, the paintings of the painter are presented at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. There, in particular, the painting "The Death of the Commissar", created in 1928, is exhibited. His theme - the death of the red commander in the fields of the civil war - outgrows a specific historical plot and becomes a timeless symbol of the victim in the name of a lofty idea. This picture once again represents the author primarily as a philosopher who seeks to embrace and connect the manifestations of the material and non-material world in the artistic space.
The artist’s canvases are also exhibited at the Voloshin House-Museum in Koktebel, at the Saratov Art Museum named after Radishchev. An extensive catalog of nearly 900 works by the master is available at the artist’s museum in his homeland in Khvalynsk.